Retargetable Processor System Integration Into Multi-Processor System-On-Chip Platforms

ISBN-13: 9781402085741 / Angielski / Twarda / 2008 / 162 str.

Andreas Wieferink; Heinrich Meyr; Rainer Leupers

Opis

Computerarchitecturepresentlyfacesanunprecedentedrevolution: Thestep from monolithic processors towards multi-core ICs, motivated by the ever - creasingneedforpowerandenergyef ciencyinnanoelectronics. Whetheryou prefer to call it MPSoC (multi-processor system-on-chip) or CMP (chip mul- processor), no doubt this revolution affects large domains of both computer science and electronics, and it poses many new interdisciplinary challenges. For instance, ef cient programming models and tools for MPSoC are largely an open issue: "Multi-core platforms are a reality - but where is the software support" (R. Lauwereins, IMEC). Solving it will require enormous research efforts as well as the education of a whole new breed of software engineers that bring the results from universities into industrial practice. Atthesametime, thedesignofcomplexMPSoCarchitecturesisanextremely time-consuming task, particularly in the wireless and multimedia application domains, where heterogeneous architectures are predominant. Due to the - ploding NRE and mask costs most companies are now following a platform approach: Invest a large (but one-time) design effort into a proper core - chitecture, and create easy-to-design derivatives for new standards or product features. Needless to say, only the most ef cient MPSoC platforms have a real chance to enjoy a multi-year lifetime on the highly competitive semiconductor market for embedded systems.

Spis treści

Foreword. Preface. 1. INTRODUCTION. 1.1 Challenge: From Board to SoC. 1.2 Degrees of SoC Customization. 1.3 Organization of this Book. 2. SOC DESIGN METHODOLOGIES. 2.1 Traditional HW/SW Co-Design. 2.2 System Level Design. 2.3 Current Research on SoC Design Methodologies. 2.4 Contribution of this Work. 3. COMMUNICATION MODELING. 3.1 Transaction Level Modeling. 3.2 Generic Communication Modeling. 3.3 Communication Customization. 3.4 The BusCompiler Tool. 4. PROCESSOR MODELING. 4.1 Generic Processor Modeling. 4.2 Processor Customization Techniques. 4.3 LISA. 5. PROCESSOR SYSTEM INTEGRATION. 5.1 Simulator Structure. 5.2 Adaptors: Bridging Abstraction Gaps. 5.3 Commercial SoC Simulation Environments. 6. SUCCESSIVE TOP-DOWN REFINEMENT FLOW. 6.1 Phase 1: Standalone. 6.2 Phase 2: IA ASIP - AVF Communication Models. 6.3 Phase 3: IA ASIP - CA TLM Bus. 6.4 Phase 4: CA ASIP - CA TLM Bus. 6.5 Phase 5: BCA ASIP - CA TLM Bus. 6.6 Phase 6: RTL ASIP - CA TLM Bus. 6.7 Phase 7: RTL ASIP - RTL Bus. 7. AUTOMATIC RETARGETABILITY. 7.1 MP-SoC Simulator Generation Chain. 7.2 Structure of the Generated Simulator. 7.3 Bus Interface Specification. 8. DEBUGGING AND PROFILING. 8.1 Multiprocessor Debugger. 8.2 TLM Bus Traffic Visualization. 8.3 Bus Interface Analysis. 9. CASE STUDY. 9.1 Multi Processor JPEG Decoding Platform. 9.2 Phase 2: IA+AVF Platform. 9.3 Phase 3: IA + BusCompiler Platform. 9.4 Phase 4: CA + BusCompiler Platform. 9.5 Phase 5: BCA + BusCompiler Platform. 10. SUMMARY. Appendices. A. Businterface Definition Files. A.1 Generic AMBA 2.0 Protocol. A.2 Derived AMBA 2.0 Protocols. A.3 AMBA 2.0 Bus Interface Specification. B. Extended CoWare Tool Flow. List of Figures. References. Index.

O autorze

Both Prof. Heinrich Meyr and Prof. Rainer Leupers have (co-)authored numerous books for Springer

Blurb

The ever increasing complexity of modern electronic devices together with the continually shrinking time-to-market and product lifetimes pose enormous chip design challenges to meet flexibility, performance and energy efficiency constraints. As a consequence, the current trend is towards programmable platforms (Multi-Processor System-on-Chip Platforms, MP-SoC), which are tailored to the respective target application. In the usual case, a new platform is designed by selecting and assembling standard platform elements.

However, best results can only be achieved if the processor cores and the communication modules themselves are also optimized for the target application. Effective exploration is only possible if accurate module simulators are generated automatically based on abstract specifications. As a matter of fact, CoWare’s BusCompiler allows generating accurate simulators for communication modules, and modeling languages such as LISA enable the same for processor cores.

In Retargetable Processor System Integration into Multi-Processor System-on-Chip Platforms, such originally independent approaches are combined in order to enable the development of highly optimized programmable platforms.

The first chapters of this book summarize the state of the art in all three involved fields separately: general system level design, communication modeling, and processor modeling. The main chapters then present a methodology and the associated tooling for enabling design space exploration as well as a successive refinement flow for the design of optimized MP-SoCs with a high degree of automation.