Digital design of a dedicated graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture for microcontrollers

Microcontrollers are a major bottleneck in operations that involve graphic handling. They are slow and do not contain sufficient memory to effectively provide high quality graphics for embedded applications. This paper addresses the problem by designing a dedicated graphics processing unit (GPU). The architecture of proposed GPU is designed, then described using Verilog HDL and successfully mapped on Xilinx Spartan 3E board. Graphic functions initiate from host device, and instructions are offloaded to the GPU over serial interface. On the GPU side, received instruction is parsed, identified and the frame buffer is updated accordingly. The GPU provides pixel writing, line drawing, rectangle fill and text writing capabilities. The VGA interface of the FPGA board is used to show the frame buffer on a monitor. The results of this scheme open a new approach in designing embedded systems where co-processor GPU can assist a slow microcontroller with graphic instructions.