An FPGA Design Flow for Reconfigurable Network-Based Multi-Processor Systems on Chip

Multi-processor systems on chip (MPSoC) platforms are becoming increasingly more heterogeneous and are shifting towards a more communication-centric methodology. Networks on chip (NoC) have emerged as the design paradigm for scalable on-chip communication architectures. As the system complexity grows, the problem emerges as how to design and instantiate such a NoC-based MPSoC platform in a systematic and automated way. This paper presents an integrated flow to automatically generate a highly configurable NoC-based MPSoC for FPGA instantiation. The system specification is done on a high level of abstraction, relieving the designer of error-prone and time consuming work. The flow uses the state-of-the-art /Ethereal NoC, and silicon hive processing cores, both configurable at design- and run-time. The authors use this flow to generate a range of sample designs whose functionality has been verified on a Celoxica RC300E development board. The board, equipped with a Xilinx Virtex II 6000, also offers a huge number of peripherals, and shows how the insertion is automated in the design for easy debugging and prototyping