Modular Audio Synthesis on FPGAs With the High Level Synthesis Development Flow – Aman Jagwani

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Modular Audio Synthesis on FPGAs With the High Level Synthesis Development Flow - Aman Jagwani - ADCx India 2024

This talk will present a modular sound synthesis design approach for FPGAs using high level synthesis(HLS) tools. With their strong potential for high throughput, ultra-low latency and high sampling rates, field programmable gate arrays can be extremely beneficial for audio processing applications. Traditionally, FPGAs are highly complex to program, requiring specialized hardware design knowledge as well as knowledge of low level hardware description languages like VHDL and Verilog. HLS allows FPGAs to be programmed at a higher level of abstraction in languages such as C and C++, enabling greater accessibility and enhanced productivity.

However, despite HLS offering a higher level of abstraction, it still requires specialized approaches, especially when applied to audio applications. The programming flow generally entails the design of a top level function that gets translated into a standalone hardware Intellectual Property(IP) module with its arguments defining inputs and outputs. Within the function, along with processing algorithms, optimization directives or pragmas have to be used for behavior, communication and interface definition. The generated IP module has to then be integrated and deployed in a complete hardware design using a set of downstream FPGA design tools such as Vivado and Vitis in the case of the AMD/Xilinx FPGA environment. Within this context, this talk will introduce a set of inter-connectable sound synthesis HLS IP cores or modules, accompanied by a base audio system to exemplify the feasibility and design considerations of modular synthesis on FPGAs. The modules presented will include different types of oscillators, filters, envelope generators and other components of modular synths. Audio and video examples will also be presented.
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Edited by Digital Medium Ltd - online.digital-medium.co.uk
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Organized and produced by JUCE: https://juce.com/
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Special thanks to the ADC24 Team:

Sophie Carus
Derek Heimlich
Andrew Kirk
Bobby Lombardi
Tom Poole
Ralph Richbourg
Prashant Mishra

#adc #dsp #audio #fpga