A silly question about FPGA

[MengHuiHanTang]

I don't know much about FPGA, but like its processing speed. I am trying to figure out if FPGA can be used to speed up our image processing algorithm.

This might sounds like a really silly question, but how do you read an image from PC and then load into FPGA for processing? Is it even possible?

[Hooovahh]

Don't worry about silly questions as long as they are asked correctly and yours was.

First the speed.  Generally any NI FPGA runs at 40MHz.  The spec of the FPGA will have more information about it but here is one here is a 7852R which states 40MHz.  That being said you can set a custom clock speed to over (or under) clock the FPGA and this depends on how much work is being done on the FPGA.  If all you are doing is turning on an DO then turning it off you can probably go up to 200+MHz.  If you try to set it too fast it won't compile and will tell you that a loop has too much logic in it and to re-optimize or change your loop rate.  You can compile for hardware you don't have installed so you can install the toolkit write some code and see if it will fit before you guy the cards.  Of course you won't know if it will work 100% until you have the hardware in hand.

Now how do you put an image on the FPGA?  Well there are several options but the best is probably the DMA (direct memory access) FIFO.  It allows fast streaming of data to and from the FPGA.  NI has many examples and the size of the buffer you can make, depends greatly on the card and the type of memory it will be stored in.

[altenbach]

NI has several vision products that use FPGA for image processing. Start here.

[MengHuiHanTang]

Thanks for the reply. I will read the links you guys provided.