Design principles for synthesizable processor cores
Paper in proceeding, 2012
As FPGAs get more competitive, synthesizable processor cores become an attractive choice for embedded computing. Currently popular commercial processor cores do not fully exploit current FPGA architectures. In this paper, we propose general design principles to increase instruction throughput on FPGA-based processor cores: first, superpipelining enables higher-frequency system clocks, and second, predicated instructions circumvent costly pipeline stalls due to branches. To evaluate their effects, we develop Tinuso, a processor architecture optimized for FPGA implementation. We demonstrate through the use of micro-benchmarks that our principles guide the design of a processor core that improves performance by an average of 38% over a similar Xilinx MicroBlaze configuration.
pipelining
Pipe linings
Computer architecture
Architecture
Field programmable gate arrays (FPGA)
Benchmarking
Processor architectures
Design Principles
Processor cores
FPGA implementations
synthesizable processor core
Embedded software
System clock
FPGA
Embedded computing
predication
Pipeline processing systems
Pipeline stall
FPGA architectures
Author
P. Schleuniger
Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Sally A McKee
Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer Engineering (Chalmers)
S. Karlsson
Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
03029743 (ISSN) 16113349 (eISSN)
Vol. 7179 LNCS 111-122978-364228292-8 (ISBN)
Subject Categories
Computer and Information Science
DOI
10.1007/978-3-642-28293-5_10
ISBN
978-364228292-8