SDMPSoC: Software-Defined MPSoC for FPGAs

Abstract

Nowadays, heterogeneous Multiprocessor Systems-on-Chip are often used for a wide variety of applications such as image and signal processing due to the high computational power. However, the programming and designing of such systems requires a high expertise in hardware as well as software. This is in contrast to a short time-to-market which is essential for the industry. As a result, a crucial software productivity gap emerges. This work presents SDMPSoC which is an automatic development environment for heterogeneous and FPGA-based MPSoCs. Based on an MPI program, a heterogeneous MPSoC for FPGAs consisting of an arbitrary number of MicroBlaze processors and hardware modules is generated. Each process of the MPI program is executed by a MicroBlaze processor or a hardware module which can be selected using constraints. Furthermore, every MicroBlaze processor can be optimized by hardware modules that executes application-specific operations. All hardware modules can be easily programmed in the MPI program and are synthesized using high-level synthesis. Functions of the MPI program can be selected by pragmas for hardware modules that are connected to a MicroBlaze processor. A process of the MPI program can be selected by constraints for a hardware module that is a PE without MicroBlaze processor. To evaluate the environment in terms of scalability, performance and area, several use cases have been implemented on a Xilinx Zynq SoC. The development phase and programming of heterogeneous MPSoCs are significantly simplified by the automatic development environment.