PCIe 5.0: Still the Backbone for Edge AI and High-Performance Systems

FPGA Prototyping in Practice: Addressing Peripheral Connectivity Challenges

Categories: EDA, Emulation, Prototyping.

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Key Takeaways

• Modern chip verification struggles with peripheral connectivity due to major differences in operating frequencies.

• Speed adaptors bridge systems running at different speeds, enabling real-world transaction-level verification.

• PCIe, HDMI, and memory models are three major use-cases where speed adaptors solve prototyping challenges.

• S2C provides a comprehensive range of speed adaptors, memory models, and daughter cards for high-speed interface support.

• With 20+ years of expertise, S2C continues to advance FPGA prototyping technology, reducing verification cycles and accelerating time-to-market.

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Introduction

Modern chip design verification is becoming increasingly complex. One of the biggest challenges is connecting real-world peripherals to FPGA prototypes or emulation platforms. User designs often run at tens of megahertz—or in some cases even below 1 MHz—while real peripherals like PCIe, Ethernet, and HDMI operate at hundreds of megahertz or higher.

This massive speed gap makes it nearly impossible to directly connect prototypes to high-speed interfaces. To overcome this limitation, engineers rely on speed adaptors—specialized hardware interfaces that bridge systems with drastically different operating frequencies. These adaptors enable real-world, high-fidelity verification even when the prototype cannot match peripheral speeds.

When hardware support is unavailable, functional behavior is recreated using protocol models or memory model IP, ensuring accurate verification of system-level interactions.

Below are three practical application cases that demonstrate how speed adaptors and memory models enhance FPGA prototyping.

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Case 1: PCIe Speed Adaptor

PCIe introduces multiple challenges, including:

• Speed mismatch between PCIe PHYs and FPGA user designs

• Protocol version conversion

• Link width and speed adaptation

• Time decoupling

• Debug visibility for tracing transactions

In FPGA prototyping, AMD (Xilinx) PCIe PHYs typically operate from 62.5 MHz (Gen1) up to 500 MHz (Gen4). Meanwhile, large partitioned user designs may struggle to exceed 20 MHz, creating a substantial speed mismatch that makes PCIe integration difficult.

Solution: PCIe Switch IP Architecture

The core solution is the PCIe Switch IP, which features:

• Multi-port architecture enabling independent link training

• Dynamic protocol/version adaptation

• Link width and speed transformations

• PCS and PIPE interface conversion IP blocks

This architecture ensures reliable speed adaptation, allowing FPGA prototypes to interface with real PCIe devices while maintaining functional correctness and stable communication.

Case 2: HDMI Speed Adaptor

High-speed multimedia interfaces like HDMI pose another challenge because video and audio streams must be captured and displayed at real-world speeds.

S2C’s HDMI speed adaptor works by:

• Sending HDMI audio/video streams directly to a host system

• Using a custom decoder to extract audio/video data

• Displaying the output via software-based monitor simulation

This approach enables thorough testing of display pipelines and multimedia subsystems—even when the FPGA prototype cannot operate anywhere near HDMI’s full speed.

A similar architecture is applied to:

• DisplayPort

• MIPI DSI

• USB interfaces

These adaptors ensure that visual and multimedia data paths can be verified accurately under realistic operating conditions.

Case 3: Memory Model IP

FPGA prototyping systems often support only a limited set of memory types, usually DDR4. However, modern SoCs require validation for advanced memory standards like:

• DDR5

• LPDDR5

• HBM2E / HBM3

To bridge this gap, S2C provides memory model IP that emulates these advanced memory types using the DDR4 hardware present on FPGA platforms.

Key Features of S2C Memory Models

• Behavioral emulation of next-generation memory interfaces

• Backdoor access for internal visibility

• Controllability and observability for efficient system debugging

• Early detection of design issues

• System-level verification before silicon availability

This allows engineers to validate memory controllers, performance behavior, and corner-case responses without requiring physical DDR5/LPDDR5/HBM hardware.

S2C’s Comprehensive Prototyping Ecosystem

S2C has developed an extensive ecosystem that includes:

• A wide range of speed adaptors

• A library of memory models

• More than 90 ready-to-use daughter cards

These solutions allow engineers to:

• Overcome high-speed peripheral connectivity challenges

• Rapidly integrate complex interfaces

• Shorten bring-up time

• Perform real-world validation earlier in the design cycle

Conclusion

With more than two decades of innovation, S2C continues to push the boundaries of FPGA prototyping. Their expanding suite of speed adaptors, protocol models, and memory emulation solutions brings prototypes closer to real-world system conditions.

By bridging speed mismatches and enabling accurate peripheral connectivity, S2C empowers engineering teams to reduce verification time, improve debugging efficiency, and accelerate time-to-market.

FPGA prototyping is no longer just a functional checkpoint—it’s now a powerful platform for full-system validation, driven by advanced digital EDA technologies and robust interface solutions.