Object-oriented approach to Rapid Custom Instruction design

摘要

Due to continuous evolution of Systems-on-Chip (SoC), the complexity of theirdesign and development has augmented exponentially. To deal with theever-growing complexity of such embedded systems, we introduce, in this paper,an object-oriented approach to rapid SoC design using auto-generation ofhardware custom instructions to simplify and accelerate the SoC design process.In our approach, a Data Flow Graph (DFG) is adopted as a representation of thearithmetic operation to convert it to a custom instruction. Then VHDL code willbe automatically generated. The input C code is automatically updated forcalling the new hardware components. To prove the effectiveness of the proposedapproach, a Java source code framework named Automatic Custom Architecturegenerator (ACAgen) is developed. Experimental results on 3D sample applicationvalidate our approach and demonstrate how the proposed framework facilitatesand accelerates the SoC design process at low costs.