With the advent of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and System-On-a-Programmable-Chip (SOPC) technology, system designers and software developers can custom design underlying hardware platforms simulation application requirements. Specifically, this technology allows a developer to use custom hardware to perform efficiently what might otherwise be time-consuming software computations. This approach to real-time simulations has heretofore not been a viable alternative.

This paper introduces FPGAs, SOPC technologies and supporting vendor tools. It also discusses the use of these tools in defining custom hardware to execute specific time-constrained tasks to support robust real-time simulations.