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Intel OpenCL

djfraz

Hello All,

 

I am at university studying electronics. for part of my course we have to work with an Altera cyclone 2 development board, it has been recommended that we use Verilog and Quartus (pre version 13.0 for device support and Vector Waveform Files).

 

I was wondering if anyone has any experience using Intel's SDK for OpenCL, and if it provides a 'better' way of programing FPGAs, or if myself and fellow student on my course are best sticking with verilog?

  • I don't have any experience with OpenCL or other "high-level" ways of designing like SystemC.  My understanding is that those languages are intended to allow C programmers to design FPGAs without having to become logic designers.  From what I've read, this actually works fairly well in some limited domains like signal processing.  However, it's not going to work well in general since in my experience the kinds of tricks one uses to design good hardware versus good software are quite different.

     

    If you're "studying electronics", you're probably best off thinking of FPGAs as digital hardware rather than as a target machine for software.  Verilog is a better language for this sort of thing, since you can write Verilog in a way that reflects the hardware you want to produce.  You'll get a better understanding of the FPGA architecture and logic/computer design in general compared to using a higher-level language.

     

    JMO/YMMV