Cyclone™ devices provide an ideal platform for implementing low-cost digital signal processing (DSP) systems on an FPGA. Cyclone devices provide a flexible hardware solution in which designers can implement as many multipliers as needed for a design.
Soft Multipliers in Cyclone Devices
The Cyclone device's M4K blocks can be used to implement soft multipliers that provide high performance for a variety of low-cost applications such as image processing, audio processing, and consumer electronics systems. The soft multipliers can be customized regarding their data widths, coefficient widths, and precision choice as needed, providing an optimal DSP implementation for the end application.
Soft multipliers of different data widths can be implemented using the M4K block either in the parallel multiplier scheme or the distributed arithmetic scheme. The two different implementations offer flexibility in latency, memory usage, and multiplier size, which enable designers to customize their implementation for their end systems. Figure 1 shows a distributed arithmetic implementation of a finite impulse response (FIR) filter using the Cyclone FPGA's M4K blocks.
Figure 1. Distributed Arithmetic Implementation of a FIR Filter Using M4K Blocks
Table 1 summarizes the number of multipliers that can be implemented in Cyclone devices using the M4K blocks.
| Table 1. 18x18 Multipliers Implemented in M4K Blocks | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Devices | Number of M4K Blocks | Number of Multipliers Using M4K Blocks | |
| EP1C3 | 13 | 5 | |
| EP1C4 | 17 | 6 | |
| EP1C6 | 20 | 7 | |
| EP1C12 | 52 | 20 | |
| EP1C20 | 64 | 25 | |
