Heterogeneous Multi-core SoC Implementation with System-Level Design Methodology

Abstract

The trend towards heterogeneous multi-core integration and higher communication bandwidth drastically increases the complexity of the SoC. Architecture design and system validation become extremely challenging. This paper presents a multi-core computing platform which consists of general-purpose microprocessor and dual programmable digital signal processor (DSP) cores for multimedia applications. To demonstrate its outstanding performance and energy efficiency, we develop multimedia and image processing applications, such as H.264 decoding and object detection, on this multi-core computing platform. In addition, to evaluate the system performance and energy efficiency, electronic system-level (ESL) design with power information is conducted for the embedded system evaluation. According to the experimental results, the system-level virtual platform can assist the hardware engineers and software engineers to enhance the multi-core platform performance and application efficiency, respectively. The systemlevel design methodology benefits to the embedded multi-core design are discussed.

Towards hardware embedded virtualization technology

“…Therefore, use case (a) does not apply. Use cases (b) and (c) assume multiple hosts; in the embedded domain, multi-core systems are typically heterogeneous [25]; application specificity allows load and power management to be coped with at design time. In the case of homogeneous multi-core platforms, typically used for computationally-intensive applications [26], use cases (b) and (c) may apply, but they will most likely conflict with real time requirements, thus should be carefully handled by the Hypervisor's core partitioning mechanisms [27] (i.e., finding the best tradeoff between static, semi-static and dynamic partitioning architectures).…”

Domain Specific High-Level Synthesis for Cryptographic Workloads

“…The growth in the consumer market for digital devices goes hand in hand with the demand for enabling more comprehensive functionality, higher performance and lower power budgets from these devices. The mutually conflicting requirements of these increasingly complex systems, coupled with the continuous downscaling of fabrication technology [154], has welcomed the design trend of multi-component heterogeneous systems [230]. Security is one of the increasingly important application required for embedded devices.…”