Automating the design of mLUT MPSoPC FPGAs in the cloud

Abstract

Modern platform FPGAs are over the million-LUT level, large enough to support complete heterogeneous Multiprocessor System-On-Chips (MPSoCs). Constructing systems with 10's of processors is currently feasible using existing manual methods within vendor-specific CAD tools. However these manual, by-hand, approaches will not be feasible for constructing future systems with 100's to 1,000's of processors. Instead, new automated system assembly approaches will be required to handle these levels of system complexity and diversity. In this paper we present a new automated design flow for creating such next generation heterogeneous MPSoCs. An integral part of the MPSoPC system created is the inclusion of a general purpose PThreadscompliant HW/SW co-designed operating system and heterogeneous compiler. Our design flow has been placed in the cloud and is freely accessible across the Internet.