Implementing a Heterogeneous Multi-Core Prototype in an FPGA

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s processor performance growth has been remarkable, with an annual growth of about 52 %. Methods such as architectural enhancements exploiting ILP and frequency scaling have been effective at increasing performance, but are now limited by its diminishing returns and the power wall. Heterogeneous processors as an alternative source for continued growth looks promising, but research on heterogeneous software is made difficult as heterogeneous hardware is in low supply. This thesis cover the design and implementation of a heterogeneous processor called SHMAC and its framework. Flexibility of the delivered system allows rapid exploration of both hardware and software sides of heterogeneous processor research questions. The system is intended for research at CARD at NTNU. Two processor tiles and a set of additional tiles for extended functionality are provided, yielding a wide range of possible hardware setups in the delivered framework. Using a Xilinx Virtex 6 we were able to implement 40 integer cores or 16 floating-point cores.