Development of a remote lab with micro-processor & DSP with FPGA accelerator

This paper describes and discusses the setting up of a DSP Cloud Lab, a setup to execute programs remotely. The programs can be executed on a variety of DSP boards; they could be microprocessor assembly language programs or programs written in assembly language requiring powerful DSP boards or even DSP boards with an FPGA accelerator. The boards used are based on Blackfin Architecture. For a student / developer who writes codes and tests on it, it appears as if they have exclusive use of the boards. However, the boards are highly shared, enabling a large number of students / developers to use them simultaneously. This paper also discusses the design choices made at different stages and the extent to which it facilitates or restricts the use of the DSP boards for a developer.