FPGA Framework for CMP

Abstract

The single core processor stagnated due to four major factors. (1) The lack of instruction level parallelism to exploit, (2) increased power consumption, (3) complexity involved in designing a modern processor, and (4) the gap in performance between memory and the processor. As the gate size has decreased, a natural solution has been to introduce several cores on the same die, creating a chip multicore processor. However, the introduction of chip multicore processors has brought a new set of new challenges such as power consumptions and cache strategies. Although throughly researched in context of super computers, the chip multiprocessor has decreased in physical size, and thus some of the old paradigms should be reevaluated, and new ones found. To be able to research, simulate and experiment on new multicore architectures, simulators and methods of prototyping are needed by the community, and has traditionally been done by software simulators. To help decrease the time between results, and increase the productivity a hardware based method of prototyping is needed. This thesis contributes by presenting a novel multicore architecture with interchangeable and easily customizable units allowing the developers to extend the architecture, rewriting only the subsystem in question. The architecture is implemented in VHDL and has been tested on a Virtex FPGA, utilizing the MicroBlaze microcontroller. Based upon FPGA technologies, the platform has a more accurate nature than a software based simulator. The thesis also shows that a hardware based environment will significantly decrease the time to results.