What Is an SoC FPGA?

SoC FPGAs are semiconductor devices that integrate programmable logic with hard processor cores, such as those from Arm. This architecture provides the ease of programming a processor along with the flexibility and performance of a programmable logic fabric.

SoC FPGAs are available from several sources:

• AMD: Zynq^®-7000 SoC and Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC families
• Intel: Stratix^® 10 SoC FPGAs, Arria^® 10 SoC FPGAs, and Arria V SoC and Cyclone^® V SoC families
• Microsemi: PolarFire^® SoC devices and SmartFusion2 and SmartFusion^® SoC FPGAs

Targeting SoC FPGAs generally requires a combination of embedded software development and FPGA design methodologies. Designers targeting MATLAB^® algorithms and Simulink^® models to SoC FPGA devices can also use:

• Embedded Coder^® to generate ANSI/ISO C/C++ code targeting embedded processor cores of SoC FPGAs.
• HDL Coder^® to generate IP cores targeting programmable logic of SoC FPGAs.
• SoC Blockset™ to extend the ability of Simulink to model, simulate, and analyze SoC FPGA architectures, including communication with off-chip DDR memories and I/O devices. SoC Blockset accounts for latency between the components on and off an SoC, which must be considered when developing models of algorithms.
• HDL Verifier™ to perform FPGA-in-the-loop testing, insert probes using FPGA Data Capture, or control IP cores in programmable logic using MATLAB AXI Master IP.
• Hardware support packages for Embedded Coder, HDL Coder, and SoC Blockset to target specific boards from AMD and Intel.