Channel State Information (CSI) is critical for the overall performance or wireless systems. Meanwhile, the estimation or CSI forms one or the most intensive tasks in radio baseband signal processing. This paper investigates the real-time implementation or channel estimation for MIMO-OFDM systems using programmable hardware aimed for software defined radio. Based on the programmable hardware architecture proposed by us, several prevalent channel estimation methods such as Least Square (LS), Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) and Pilot-Symbol-Aided (PSA) are evaluated from both the performance and computational latency perspectives. By utilizing the symmetric feature of the covariance matrix, a simplified two-sided Jacobi rotation method is adopted to speed up the complex-valued singular value decomposition involved in the MMSE channel estimation.