Design tools for reconfigurable embedded systems

This paper describes the developed hardware/software tools, libraries and design methods for FPGA-based embedded systems which include: a kernel prototyping board with the Xilinx Spartan 3 FPGA; a set of projects for reusable FPGA-based circuits; utilities for FPGA programming; software/hardware tools that provide support for reconfiguration; and programs enabling the designers to partition the functionality of the developed system between software, running on a PC computer, and hardware, implemented in FPGA. A special attention has been paid to data exchange between a host computer and the kernel prototyping board based on compression/decompression techniques. Examples of practical applications are also presented.