A guide to migrating from microprocessor to FPGA coping with the support tool limitations

Microprocessors have been used as the main processing elements of embedded systems mainly because of their low cost, flexibility for system upgrade at the software level and because of the availability of efficient support tools. The configurable computing technology brought the software flexibility to the hardware level, but limitations in support tools are a barrier for software designers. Using a microcontroller based embedded system as a study case, this paper introduces workable strategies to be used by software designers to develop a complete embedded system (software+hardware parts) using a single description language, and circumventing support tool limitations.