Enhancing conventional FPGA-based prototype boards Conventional
FPGA-based prototype boards are usually equipped with a
J-Connector, which is intended to allow the prototype board to
be connected to external devices. The proposed approach involves
the creation of a special interface card that plugs into this
J-Connector and acts as a bridge between the host workstation
and the FPGA-based prototype board as illustrated in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Adding an interface card and some soft IP. All
communication between the FPGA-based prototype board and the
workstation could be implemented using some dedicated buses that
would provide the high throughput required for emulation, co-
emulation, and co-simulation. By means of this interconnect
technology, users would have the flexibility to configure and
use different prototype boards with the same J-Connector. This
capability also means that users would have the ability to
quickly and easily transition to faster and bigger FPGA-based
prototype boards, and it would complete