FPGA to the cloud

FPGAs are enabling more applications to be put to the market at a fraction of the cost of ASICs and with a much faster deployment rate. However, the wide range of FPGA brands and types currently available on the market; could overwhelm first time users when choosing a suitable FPGA for a given application. Furthermore, intermediate-to-advanced FPGA users may desire to evaluate some new FPGAs before committing to a purchase. FPGA to the Cloud is a web application that allows users to interact with FPGA evaluation kits remotely on a try-before-you-buy or pay-per-use model. The end user would access a web site where the web application is hosted. The end user would select an FPGA evaluation board from a list, and would be given direct remote access to said FPGA board; with programming tools. The user could use available sample FPGA design files, or upload user-created FPGA design files; for testing and evaluation. The project-prototype is based on the ZedBoard which uses Xilinx’s Zynq-7000 FPGA. The web application was developed using Laravel’s PHP framework.