Professor Lennart Lindh has had his focus on programmable logic for over 20 years. He wants to throw out the present von Neumann architecture and replace it with FPGAs that can handle data in parallel and with much less overhead. The switch would cut back cost and also reduce the development time compared to today's embedded systems with processors and tangled code. - The unique thing with FPGAs is that the development continues so rapidly, which makes the price go down all the time for boards, components and tools. It is really incredible and thats the reason why I and many others will continue to work with FPGAs, says Lennart Lindh. He is a veteran of the programmable logic and an all-rounder who likes to start new projects. The base has for a long time been Mälardalens University, where he has built up both education and research. But since a year ago, he is a professor in Jönköping where he was born. In addition to the professorship, which is half-time, he tries to educate the industry, writes books and organizes the conference FPGA World. He also likes to spends November and part of December, far from the darkness and gloomy weather in Sweden.
Building blocks boost productivity When I meet him a rainy summer day in Västerås where he still lives, he talks passionately about today's component-based design methods, where you can take complete IP blocks, much like when you buy a door or window to a house-building, instead of writing all the code from scratch. The component-based thinking has been a major productivity boost for both software and hardware. - But you must know what you're doing. Even inserting a door has its problems at a lower level of abstraction. Many business leaders believe they can work only on the higher abstraction levels, it is completely wrong. If we get that type of students in classes in embedded systems, then there is a risk that you get problems that causes delays and extra costs. Engineering skills are incredible important and you do not learn that college but rather in the industry. At the same time the component-based way of thinking is an opportunity for Swedish companies. - The things the companies want to keep as secrets, they can design as a component, like a black box. But few Swedish companies have taken the opportunity to earn money selling components. Some exceptions exists like Mocean Labs who developed a Most-block for Xilinx library. Also a few consultant companies like ORSoC, BitSim and Prevas has some components. In addition, Xilinx does part of the development of its soft processor MicroBlaze in Sweden, so the knowledge of component based design exist in the country. - There is an opportunity for more companies. FPGA-companies as Xilinx and Altera have similar frameworks to manage hardware and software components so as a component supplier you can sell through them. In addition, the job only has to be done once if you write the code in VHDL and do not use special functions. - If you follow certain design rules you can synthesize VHDL code for a new FPGA-circuit an indefinitely number of times and even transfer the design to an ASIC. Lennart Lindh, however, believes that more research is needed on how to do design on a combination of software and hardware to get the entire design to be independent of the technology. For each new generation, the code has to be recompiled, but the functions and timing behavior of the component will not change. If we get there, the hardware is at the same abstraction level as the software is today. If you have written a program in C you should be able to move it to a new processor and get the same functions, the only problem is that the time-behavior may change. In 1999 Lennart Lindh started Real Fast, a company involved in training and consultancy. The company also sold IP components. It was a real-time kernel and an UDP hardware acceleration originated from research at Mälardalen University. The business was sold in 2006 and 2007. - I felt shattered by running a company. A lot of the work is not about technology, and in the end you have to choose what you want to do. Both worlds are fun but I prefer to work with technology and it suits me better to be at the academy. Through his own company Agstu he remains involved with training for the industry. - If you have done research, you should train people and also write books about the new knowledge. Otherwise, it falls into oblivion and then all the research money is wasted. All the course materials for industry and for students at Bergen University College, Mälardalen University and the Jönköping University are the same. But teaching methods are different. - Those who come from the industry has often worked with FPGAs for some years, they have a more solid knowledge. Some even know more than me in certain areas, which leads to interesting discussions.
The lab fits in the portfolio Lennart Lindh tries to spend November and December in warmer countries than Sweden. A couple of years he has been in India and Thailand but also in the Canary Islands. - It's fantastic, really something I can recommend if you have the possibility. It gives so many side effects, with new contacts and the possibility to work undisturbed. A few times I've been invited by the university. Other years, I write books and do research. I have my FPGA-board, a computer and the Internet. That's is my entire lab. Lennart Lindh's view on the Internet changed when he was a member of a research project which did development for Mentor Graphics. The project had members from United States, England and India. Cooperation run smoothly with weekly virtual meetings over the Internet and by exchanging reports. The same technique could be used to connect the few, scattered FPGA-researchers in the Nordic countries. - It's a vision I have, that the Universities don't work independently, but rather work together, but it requires money and I do not know if we can get funding for it.
Has created a meeting place The FPGA World Conference, which he started with David Källberg five years ago is the embryo of a Swedish network for programmable logic. FPGA World has since the start, in Västerås in the autumn of 2004, grown to become an established event which annually brings together approximately 200 FPGA-professionals. This fall, the conference and its associated mini-exhibition also takes place in Copenhagen and the status of the academic part has been increased. The accepted academic papers are published by the sub-department Sigbed, within the research organization ACM. Lennart Lindh would also like to try to forge closer ties with the FPGA-companies. - It would be good to have a connection with San José. Now that I have good contacts with Altera I'll try to get a foothold in their research lab so I can send the graduate students over there. As we all know the two major FPGA companies have a continuously ongoing duel, but the fact that Lennart Lindh nowadays mostly work with Altera is not to bee seen as a position in the match. - I had worked a long time with Xilinx, so I switched because I wanted to broaden my views.
Request more support from industry Most FPGA manufacturers have an extensive program to help universities. Among other things the give the students their own development boards and they can download free tools for development. Altera has also arranged special student competitions and announce the winners at the FPGA World conference. - I would be happy to see more FPGA suppliers support the interest among young people to learn more about the FPGA technology. Despite contests and other gimmicks, the interest for hardware among students is very weak. In fact so weak that the information technology courses that Lennart Lindh created at Mälardalen University has folded. What remains is simply the software group. - The larger universities have fared better and Engineering continues to attract students to the electronics and embedded systems, although there are not as many as in the 90s. In Jönköping, he is planning to build a small research group that will have a large network to the best research environments around software/hardware for embedded systems. - Of course I will continue with accelerators for operation system with entirely new functions that are not possible to implement in software alone. But the orientation depends on what the sponsors want, I myself would like to investigate how to make complex embedded systems, without von Neuman Architecture. The idea is to examine the design methodology and techniques to make embedded systems exclusively in hardware, without any processor cores but also systems with a combination of software and hardware.
Sooner or later, there will be a change of the system It was proven by one of his graduate students in the early 2000s. Four out of five embedded systems such as ABB used, were possible to make cheaper and with decreased development time, by dropping the CPU and only use a FPGAs without any hard or soft processor cores. The solution is perhaps comfortable when you develop an embedded system for a coffee machine but not that obvious for larger systems. Lennart Lindh is worried that Swedish companies are too conservative, they believe that software is the technology front for embedded systems. - It's quite clear that there will be changes in technology, we must constantly be alert. As hardware costs approach zero we must concentrate on the development cost.