Technology-independent approach for FPGA and ASIC implementations

This paper describes the technology-independent approach for FPGA (Field-programmable gate array) and ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) implementations. This approach is based on the reuse of portable building blocks described at RTL level, thus the design can be mapped to an ASIC or an FPGA devices with few RTL code changes when migrating between FPGA and ASIC. As case study, an OpenRISC based SoC (System on Chip) for Network application is evaluated. To validate our design, we have chosen an HTTPD (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Daemon) web server which was prototyped into FPGA platform for functional validation, then implemented as an ASIC. Results in term of area utilization and power consumption are given.