Following publication of his article about a high-res network camera based on a reconfigurable FPGA running Linux, it dawned on Andrey Filippov that there might be a significant — and mostly untapped — opportunity to combine Linux with reconfigurable FPGAs in a wide range of embedded systems and devices. Which naturally raises questions as to the availability of “open” development tools for FPGA development. That is, embedded Linux developers are accustomed to using gcc to compile software for a variety of processors; but are there any “open” tools for use on reconfigurable FPGAs?

So when Xilinx approached Filippov to write an article about his Xilinx/Linux-based camera for their newsletter, he decided to shift the focus from details of the implementation of his camera, to the more general issues of “open” development tools and software for FPGA-based embedded system design.

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