flink is

• an universal serial interface to FPGA's
• is open-source
• is highly flexibel
• is real-time capable

flink can be read as fast link or as the German „flink“ meaning fast. It enables any processors to communicate with an external FPGA over a serial interface. The FPGA may contain several blocks such as counters or pulse-width modulation. Such blocks are extensively used in robotics for control applications.

flink can be used on a multitude of targets and with various setups.
flink includes the following modules

• flinkVHDL: Configuration for an external FPGA toghether with a suitable hardware link
• flinkLinux: Kernel Modules
• flinkLib: Userspace library for C/C++
• flinkLibLite: Userspace library for OS-less systems for C/C++
• flinkUtils: Utilities and test programs for the flink library
• flinkDeep: Library for Java

Implement all necessary hardware modules with flink VHDL modules and interfaces and choose a suitable interconnection with the available flink Linux Kernel Modules. Develop your application using the flink Userspace Library. The following picture shows the system setup.

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flink with OS and C/C++ programming

An external FPGA contains hardware modules, which provide certain functions such as a pwm generator or an analog input channel. Such an external FPGA is represented by a flink device. Every flink device contains one or more subdevices. A subdevice represents a function. At last every subdevice has one or more channels.

• device: An external FPGA, group of subdevices.
• subdevice: Modul with a specific function, such as digital IO or analog input.
• channel: Single channel of a subdevice, corresponds to a single pin of a digital IO subdevice.