An open platform for developing multiprocessor SoCs

Nanometer technologies integrate hundreds of millions of transistors in a single chip. Opportunities provided by these technologies, combined with the consolidation of platform-based design approaches, the evolution toward multiprocessor architectures, and consideration of the network-on-chip (NoC) paradigm suggest new methods for designing and verifying embedded systems. Clearly, a pure software simulation platform can't provide the performance required for developing multiprocessor system-on-chip (MPSoC) designs. One of the main design risks for today's systems is the architecture, which developers must validate as early as possible in the overall system design cycle because it has the biggest impact on system dimensioning and performance. To solve these problems, we've studied a reconfigurable MPSoC emulation platform and developed the main emulation subsystem and board. A low-cost modular approach that uses emulation offers an alternative to software simulation for the design and verification of complex multiprocessor system-on-chip (MPSoC) designs.