Structured Design of Complex Hardware Microarchitectures Based on Explicit Generic Implementations of Custom Microarchitectural Mechanisms

Abstract

In typical computer system design flows, hardware microarchitecture is commonly considered a dynamically developing domain, where abstract mechanisms remain mostly in conceptual form and exhibit poor source code reuse in designs. However, many important basic mechanisms appear to be pervasive and persistent. This paper summarizes original efforts to propose generic implementations of microarchitectural mechanisms for in-order and out-of-order microarchitectures and various demo designs based on these implementations. The basic EDA components proposed for this design approach are “Kernel IP (KIP) cores”—open-source collection of programmable hardware generators inferred from microarchitectural templates. KIP cores feasibility for their role is demonstrated from the viewpoints of abstract representation of microarchitectural mechanisms, support of functional differentiation of designs, and generic optimizations. Experimental designing according to this approach has shown useful separation of concerns in hardware design activities, lower design effort, and increased formalization and code reuse.