Field programmable chips and systems: architecture exploration, CAD tool development and novel applications

现场可编程芯片和系统是针对消费者和汽车电子、通信、联网等中的广泛应用的数字系统的非常流行的实现介质。 为了充分利用其潜力，需要研究开发新的CAD工具，以帮助设计人员将其设计有效地映射到目标系统。此外，随着所实现的设计的复杂性持续增长，需要研究开发能够有效地实现各种设计的新架构。由于其巨大的逻辑容量，当前的FPGA是有效的现场可编程芯片上系统（FPSoC）。因此，为了有效地利用他们的资源，需要探索基于可参数化和可重用的知识产权（IP）核心的设计。片上网络（NoC）是使用多个IP核实现的FPSoCs的一种很有前途的互连方案。因此，需要探索适合FPGA的NoC架构。最后，需要探索数字信号处理等领域的新应用。我们在这一领域的研究目标是：（a）开发NoCBuild，一个用于NoC组件/构建块的设计空间探索（DSE）的CAD工具。 (b)开发一个参数化NoC组件的VHDL库，用于NoCBuild CAD工具。(c)开发并在可能的情况下获得一套真实的世界基准应用程序，用于评估基于NoC的系统。(d)探索用于实现各种多光谱图像处理算法的NoC架构。(e)开发一个可配置的IP核，提供并行Turbo解码器的高性能FPGA实现。探索现场可编程芯片和系统在数字信号处理不同领域的新应用。目标之一是为真实的世界应用开发知识产权核心，这些应用可能对行业设计师有用。这项工作将有助于开发CAD工具和NoC架构，这对加拿大下一代FPSoC的设计人员非常有用。

Field programmable chips and systems are a very popular implementation medium for digital systems targeting a wide range of applications in consumer and automotive electronics, communications, networking, etc. In order to utilize their full potential, research is needed for the development of new CAD tools to help the designers in mapping their designs effectively to the target systems. Also as the complexity of the designs implemented continues to grow, research is needed in developing new architectures that can efficiently implement a wide range of designs. Due to their huge logic capacity, current FPGAs are effectively Field Programmable Systems on Chips (FPSoCs). Hence to utilize their resources effectively design based on parameterizable and reusable Intellectual Property (IP) cores needs to be explored. Network-on-chip (NoC) is a promising interconnection scheme for FPSoCs implemented using multiple IP cores. Hence NoC architectures suitable for FPGAs need to be explored. Finally, novel applications in areas such as digital signal processing need to be explored. The objectives of our research in this area are: (a) Develop NoCBuild, a CAD tool for Design Space Exploration (DSE) of NoC components/building blocks. (b) Develop a VHDL library of parameterizable NoC components that will be used by NoCBuild CAD tool. (c) Develop and where possible, acquire a suite of real world benchmark applications for evaluating NoC-based systems. (d) Explore NoC architectures for implementing a variety of multi-spectral image processing algorithms. (e) Develop a configurable IP core that provides high performance FPGA implementation of parallel turbo decoders. Explore novel applications of field programmable chips and systems in different areas of digital signal processing. One of the goals is to develop intellectual property cores for real world applications that can be potentially useful for designers in the industry. This work will contribute towards the development of CAD tools and NoC architectures that will be very useful to designers of the next generation of FPSoCs in Canada.