Vision Processing with the Canny Edge Detection Reference Design

ID 683433
Date 2/14/2015
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.5.1. FPGA and ARM Processor Clock Domains

Both clock domains in the Canny edge reference design use the Qsys Modular Scatter-Gather Direct Memory Access controller (mSGDMA) soft IP core. For the stream-to-memory conversion, the mSGDMA increments the memory address by one 32-bit word address and stores the input pixel in that address for each pixel received. The start address and length of transfer are set by the FPGA by writing to the appropriate control registers of the mSGDMA. The transfer length is the total number of pixels in a video. The reverse mSGDMA memory-to-stream conversion is similar. The FPGA provides the start memory address and number of memory entries to convert into a pixel stream.

The Qsys components are in the fixed FPGA 50 MHz clock domain. The design uses digital video interface (DVI) and its clock frequency varies according to video resolution. Because the pixel streams are in the clk_dvi domain, the design uses a dual clocked FIFO buffer for proper data clock domain bridging. Using a FIFO buffer buffers the pixel data.

The FPGA pixel stream is not continuous as it pauses when the data enable signal is active low. For DVI, pixel data are only latched when the DE control signal is active high. Furthermore, the mSGDMA operates using burst transactions as the HPS SDRAM multiport front end (MPFE) controller may be busy servicing other requests. For example when the ARM processor reads or writes from memory. Hence, a buffer ensures that no pixel data is lost. The design allows no backpressure to occur. For the stream-to-memory FIFO clock domain bridging buffer, the fill rate is determined by the input pixel stream out of the FPGA Canny double threshold block. The output rate is determined by the mSGDMA stream to memory transaction rate.