Generation of multi-core systems from multithreaded software

Abstract

A heterogeneous system with soft CPU tailored to the individual threads of the application, while still software based, offers the potential for improved performance and resource utilization over a homogeneous system. In this paper we present a method to automatically create a heterogeneous multi-core system from a multithreaded software application. The resulting system consists of processing elements based on customized MIPS soft CPUs coupled with their respective programs. Using instruction set architecture (ISA) subsetting, we adapt the individual soft CPUs to the specific computations they have to perform. We have carried out a case study with a constraint solver application for which we find a performance increase of 1.54 accompanied with an area reduction of 22.5% compared to a homogeneous multicore system. We also present an automated toolchain that generates synthesizable IP-cores from software threads with little additional development overhead.