Spade is a new hardware description language which aims to make hardware description easier and less error prone. It does this by taking lessons from software programming languages, and adding language level support for common hardware constructs, all without compromising the low level control over what hardware gets generated.

When optimising the vehicle trajectory and powertrain energy management of hybrid electric vehicles, it is important to include look-ahead information such as road conditions and other traffic. One method for doing so is dynamic programming, but the execution time of such an algorithm on a general purpose CPU is too slow for it to be useable in real time. Significant improvements in execution time can be achieved by utilising parallel computations, for example, using a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). A tool for automatically converting a vehicle model written in C++ into code that can executed on an FPGA which can be used for dynamic programming-based control is presented in this paper. A vehicle model with a mild-hybrid powertrain is used as a case study to evaluate the developed tool and the output quality and execution time of the resulting hardware. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.

By running simulation models on FPGAs, their execution speed can be significantly improved, at the cost of increased development effort. This paper describes a project to develop a tool which converts simulation models written in high level languages into fast FPGA hardware. The tool currently converts code written using custom C++ data types into Verilog. A model of a hybrid electric vehicle is used as a case study, and the resulting hardware runs significantly faster than on a general purpose CPU.