Rapid design space exploration for soft core processor customization and selection

摘要

The large number of soft core processors available today make it challenging to select the best processor for a given application. This issue is further exacerbated by the numerous configuration options available for soft core processors while customizing for contradictory design requirements such as performance and area. In this paper, we propose a framework for rapid application-specific soft core processor customization as well as selection to achieve best performance within user-specified area constraint. The proposed technique is scalable to the large number of configuration options available in modern soft core processors by relying on rapid and accurate estimation models instead of time consuming FPGA synthesis and execution steps. Experimental results on two leading commercial soft core processors executing applications from the popular CHStone benchmark suite show over 93% accuracy in processor performance estimation, completed in order of seconds, leading to a rapid and reliable soft core processor customization and selection.