SLATE: Compiler-driven Design Space Exploration for Heterogeneous System-on-a-Chip


Principal Investigators:

Pedro Diniz and Mary Hall


Summary

With the increasing number of available transistors on a die it is now possible to integrate on a single die various computing elements interconnected via reconfigurable networks in what is commonly designated as Systems-On-A-Chip (SOC). The computing elements of the system can incorporate reconfigurable techniques to allow them to be tuned to application-specific functions. This project focuses on system-level mapping of applications written in imperative programming languages such as C to System-On-A-Chip systems implemented using multiple Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) architectures. The proposed research addresses system-level partitioning and scheduling of the execution of tasks among computing cores based on high-level program analysis as well as managing the storage and movement of data between both internal and external memories and between tasks. The proposed research addresses these issues by the synergistic collaboration of program analysis, parallelizing compiler technology and behavioral synthesis tools. This project is the first comprehensive, and automatic, integration of parallelizing compiler technology with EDA synthesis. It is also the first attempt to integrate in a compiler high-level loop transformations guided by estimates provided by commercially available synthesis tools. The end result is a realistic and accurate design space exploration strategy we believe is widely applicable to current and future multiple FPGA systems as well as future System-On-a-Chip (SoC) systems. An automated application mapping approach that addresses system-level issues as proposed in this research will ultimately allow designers to explore a wider range of application mapping strategies for SoC systems.

Keywords:

Reconfigurable Architectures; System-Level Design; Design-Space Exploration.

Related Publications

Funding:

National Science Foundation. Grant CCR-0209228

Period of Performance:

8/1/02-07/31/06.