[Image Processing Engineer Column] For Software Engineers
アポロ精工 アポロ精工 新横浜オフィス（旧ケーアイテクノロジー/旧市川ソフトラボラトリー）
This is not just about image processing, but I would like to provide some insights on variables (know-how) that may be helpful for software engineers working closely with hardware. Are you familiar with SoCFPGA? It is an FPGA with an embedded microcontroller. Currently, the mainstream offerings from the top two companies both include ARM. This ARM is referred to as a "hard core." On the other hand, for a long time, there has been a demand to embed small microcontrollers within FPGAs. To meet this demand, various manufacturers have developed mechanisms to incorporate freely configurable logic circuits within FPGAs. XILINX, for example, offers a soft core called MicroBlaze(TM). Hard cores and soft cores are used differently based on their applications. Here is an important point that may not be widely known: the char type variable in MicroBlaze is signed, while in ARM it is unsigned. You might be surprised, but as you know, whether a variable is signed or unsigned can lead to different results even with the same calculation. I wanted to highlight this point because if you attempt to port code without being aware of it, you may encounter difficulties. *News is distributed through our company newsletter.
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