ABSTRACT
Soft-core programmable processors on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) can be custom synthesized to instantiate only those hardware units, such as multipliers and floating-point units, that an application requires to meet performance demands, thus minimizing soft-core size on the FPGA. Conjoining processors, meaning to share hardware units among two or more processors, can further reduce soft-core size, leaving more resources for other circuits such as custom coprocessors. Using Xilinx MicroBlaze coprocessors and standard embedded system benchmarks, we show that conjoining two processors can provide 16% processor size reductions on average, with less than 1% cycle count overhead. We introduce an efficient dynamic-programming-based exploration method to find the best custom instantiation of hardware units, considering both standalone and conjoined options, for soft-core processors.
- Abraham, A., B. Rau., Efficent Design Space Exploration in PICO. 2000. International Conference on Compilers, Architecture, and Synthesis for Embedded Systems (CASES). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Altera Corp. Nios II Processors. http://www.altera.com/products/ip/processors/nios2/ni2-index.html, 2005.Google Scholar
- Cong, J., Y. Fan, G. Han, Z. Zhang. Application-Specific Instruction Generation for Configurable Processor Architecures. 2004. ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Cong, J., Y. Fan, G. Han, A. Jagannathan, G. Reinman, Z. Zhang. Instruction Set Extension with Shadow Registers for Configurable Processors. 2005. ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dwivedi, B., A. Kumar, M. Balakrishnan, Automatic Synthesis of System on Chip Multiprocessor Architectures for Process Networks. 2004. International Symposium on Hardware/Software Codesign and Internation Symposium on System Synthesis (CODES/ISSS). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Huebner, M., T. Becker, J. Becker. Real-Time LUT-Based Network Topologies for Dynamic and Partial FPGA Self-Reconfiguration. 2004. 13th Symposium on Integrated Circuit Design and System Design (SBCCI). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jin. Y., N. Satish, K. Ravindran, K. Keutzer. An Automated Exploration Framework for FPGA-based Soft Multiprocessor Systems. 2005. International Symposium on Hardware/Software Codesign and Internation Symposium on System Synthesis (CODES/ISSS). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kumar, R., N. Jouppi, D. Tullsen. Conjoined-core Chip Multiprocessing. In the Proceedings of the 37th International Symposium on Microarchitecture. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kumar, R., V. Zyuban, D. Tullsen. Interconnections in Multi-core Architectures: Understanding Mechanisms, Overheads and Scaling. 2005. In the Preceedings of the 32nd International Symposium on Computer Architecture. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Poseidon Triton System. http://www.poseidon-systems.comGoogle Scholar
- Tencillica, www.tencillica.comGoogle Scholar
- Xilinx, Inc. MicroBlaze Soft Processor Core. http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xebiz/designResources/ip_product_details.jsp?key=micr o_blaze, 2005.Google Scholar
- Yamada, T., S. Kataoka and K. Watanabe, "Heuristic and Exact Algorithms for the Disjunctively Constrained Knapsack Problem", Information Processing Society of Japan Journal, Vol. 43, No. 9 (2002), 2864--2870.Google Scholar
- Yiannacouras, P., J. Rose, J. Steffan, The Microarchitecture of FPGA-Based Soft Processors. 2005. International Conference on Compilers, Architecture, and Synthesis for Embedded Systems (CASES). Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Conjoining soft-core FPGA processors
Recommendations
Exploration and Customization of FPGA-Based Soft Processors
As embedded systems designers increasingly use field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) while pursuing single-chip designs, they are motivated to have their designs also include soft processors, processors built using FPGA programmable logic. In this ...
Portable, flexible, and scalable soft vector processors
Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are increasingly used to implement embedded digital systems, however, the hardware design necessary to do so is time-consuming and tedious. The amount of hardware design can be reduced by employing a microprocessor ...
Secure Extension of FPGA General Purpose Processors for Symmetric Key Cryptography with Partial Reconfiguration Capabilities
In data security systems, general purpose processors (GPPs) are often extended by a cryptographic accelerator. The article presents three ways of extending GPPs for symmetric key cryptography applications. Proposed extensions guarantee secure key ...
Comments