Reconfigurable supercomputing has been used by many high-performance computer systems to accelerate the processing speed. Thus, it is the present trend to use the microprocessor to combine with reconfigurable FPGA as the embedded system platform. However, the hardware-software co-design and integration of embedded system become great challenges of the designer. Beside this, the communication between hardware and software is crucial for the system to be operated effectively. Our concept consists of the design of FPGA configuration, described in I-Link hardware/software integration, improve the communication among the hardware and software. Besides, by using command packet method, we put the data to multi-hardware through hardware management unit (HMU). While system is operated, The Boot Loader will set up TCB and HCB data structure through PSP. The PSP can be regarded as the important reference segment of messages switching among system and hardware/software. The HMU has data buffering and management ability which can let the processes more easy and smooth. We successfully accomplish a hardware-software integrated system in HSCP, which is developed in our laboratory. The basic components of our platform include ARM7TDMI CPU, memory and Altera ACEK 1K-100 of FPGA. By using ARM-code, we also preliminary accomplish the Boot Loader, HW Constructor and self-developed embedded system. Finally, we make use of a large amount of multiplication operation and matrix summation to verify the feasibility of this system architecture.

Une plateforme de conception est une solution totale qui permet à une équipe de conception de développer un système sur puce. Une telle plateforme se compose d'un ensemble de bibliothèques et de circuits réutilisables (IPs), d'outils de CAO et de kits de conception en conformité avec les flots de conception et les méthodologies supportés. Les spécifications de ce type de plateforme offrent un large éventail d'informations, depuis des paramètres de technologie, jusqu'aux informations sur les outils. En outre, les développeurs de bibliothèque/IP ont des difficultés à obtenir les données nécessaires à partir ces spécifications en raison de leur informalité et complexité. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons des méthodologies, des flots et des outils pour formaliser les spécifications d'une plateforme de conception et les traiter. Cette description proposée vise à être utilisée comme une référence pour générer et valider les bibliothèques et les IPs. Nous proposons un langage de spécification basé sur XML (nommé LDSpecX). De plus, nous présentons une méthode basée sur des références pour créer une spécification fiable en LDSpecX et des mots-clés basés sur des tâches pour en extraire les données efficacement. A l'aide des solutions proposées, nous développons une plateforme de spécification. Nous développons une bibliothèque de cellules standard en utilisant cette plateforme de spécification. Nous montrons ainsi que notre approche permet de créer une spécification complète et cohérente avec une réduction considérable du temps. Cette proposition comble également l'écart entre les spécifications et le système automatique existant pour le développement rapide de bibliothèques/IPs. / A design platform (DP) is a total solution to build a System-On-Chip (SOC). DP consists of a set of libraries/IPs, CAD tools and design kits in conformity with the supported design flows and methodologies. The DP specifications provide a wide range of information from technology parameters like Process-Voltage-Temperature (PVT) corners to CAD tools’ information for library/IP development. However, the library/IP developers have difficulties in obtaining the desired data from the existing specifications due to their informality and complexity. In this thesis, we propose methodologies, flows and tools to formalize the DP specifications for their unification and to deal with it. The proposed description is targeting to be used as a reference to generate and validate libraries (standard cells, I/O, memory) as well as complex IPs (PLL, Serdes, etc.). First, we build a suitable data model to represent all required information for library/IP development and then propose a specification language named Library Development Specification based on XML (LDSpecX). Furthermore, we introduce a reference-based method to create a reliable specification in LDSpecX and task-based keywords to efficiently extract data from it. On the basis of the proposed solutions, we develop a specification platform. Experimentally, we develop a standard cell library from the specification creation to library validation by using the specification platform. We show that our approach enables to create a complete and consistent specification with a considerable reduction in time. It also bridges the gap between the specification and current automatic system for rapid library/IP development.

No description available.

<p dir="ltr">This study provides insights into the right combination of devices in a co-design task, in this case, at designing a game level. The cross-reality systems enable users to connect and collaborate across the Reality-Virtuality continuum i.e., PC/Desktop, augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and virtual reality (VR). Co-design involves two or more users coming together to ideate a clear objective, and build using the appropriate tools for collaboration, design, testing, and refinement for the masses. It also considers the time and resources used throughout the process with constant and open communication. The simulation design is based on developing an application that allows two users to connect in a pairwise modality (Desktop-Desktop, VR-VR or Desktop-VR) and use the assets provided to design a game level. The users were given a layout of the level and factors based on which the level will be designed. The results are discussed, and future work and conclusions are provided based on them.</p>

Network-on-chip (NoC) based multi-processor systems-on-chip (MPSoCs) are promising candidates for future multi-processor embedded platforms, which are expected to be composed of hundreds of heterogeneous processing elements (PEs) to potentially provide high performances. However, together with the performances, the systems complexity will increase, and new high level design techniques will be needed to efficiently model, simulate, debug and synthesize them. System-level design (SLD) is considered to be the next frontier in electronic design automation (EDA). It enables the description of embedded systems in terms of abstract functions and interconnected blocks. A promising complementary approach to SLD is the use of models of computation (MoCs) to formally describe the execution semantics of functions and blocks through a set of rules. However, also when this formalization is used, there is no clear way to synthesize system-level models into software (SW) and hardware (HW) towards a NoC-based MPSoC implementation, i.e., there is a lack of system design automation (SDA) techniques to rapidly synthesize and prototype system-level models onto heterogeneous NoC-based MPSoCs. In addition, many of the proposed solutions require large overhead in terms of SW components and memory requirements, resulting in complex and customized multi-processor platforms. In order to tackle the problem, a novel model-based SDA flow has been developed as part of the thesis. It starts from a system-level specification, where functions execute according to the synchronous MoC, and then it can rapidly prototype the system onto an FPGA configured as an heterogeneous NoC-based MPSoC. In the first part of the thesis the HeartBeat model is proposed as a model-based technique which fills the abstraction gap between the abstract system-level representation and its implementation on the multiprocessor prototype. Then details are provided to describe how this technique is automated to rapidly prototype the modeled system on a flexible platform, permitting to adjust the system specification until the designer is satisfied with the results. Finally, the proposed SDA technique is improved defining a methodology to automatically explore possible design alternatives for the modeled system to be implemented on a heterogeneous NoC-based MPSoC. The goal of the exploration is to find an implementation satisfying the designer's requirements, which can be integrated in the proposed SDA flow. Through the proposed SDA flow, the designer is relieved from implementation details and the design time of systems targeting heterogeneous NoC-based MPSoCs on FPGA is significantly reduced. In addition, it reduces possible design errors proposing a completely automated technique for fast prototyping. Compared to other SDA flows, the proposed technique targets a bare-metal solution, avoiding the use of an operating system (OS). This reduces the memory requirements on the FPGA platform comparing to related work targeting MPSoC on FPGA. At the same time, the performance (throughput) of the modeled applications can be increased when the number of processors of the target platform is increased. This is shown through a wide set of case studies implemented on FPGA. / <p>QC 20140609</p>