An Agile Approach to Building RISC-V Microprocessors
| Autor: | Krste Asanovic, Bora Nikolic, David A. Patterson, Yunsup Lee, Jaehwa Kwak, Andrew Waterman, Elad Alon, Ben Keller, Henry Cook, Ruzica Jevtic, Stevo Bailey, Alberto Puggelli, Brian Richards, Pi-Feng Chiu, Jonathan Bachrach, Brian Zimmer, Milovan Blagojevic, Rimas Avizienis |
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| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
Schedule
Computer science 02 engineering and technology Integrated circuit computer.software_genre law.invention Software law 0202 electrical engineering electronic engineering information engineering Clock generator Electrical and Electronic Engineering computer.programming_language business.industry 020208 electrical & electronic engineering Hardware description language Software development 020202 computer hardware & architecture Microprocessor CMOS Computer architecture Hardware and Architecture RISC-V Operating system business computer Agile software development |
| Zdroj: | IEEE Micro. 36:8-20 |
| ISSN: | 0272-1732 |
| DOI: | 10.1109/mm.2016.11 |
| Popis: | The final phase of CMOS technology scaling provides continued increases in already vast transistor counts, but only minimal improvements in energy efficiency, thus requiring innovation in circuits and architectures. However, even huge teams are struggling to complete large, complex designs on schedule using traditional rigid development flows. This article presents an agile hardware development methodology, which the authors adopted for 11 RISC-V microprocessor tape-outs on modern 28-nm and 45-nm CMOS processes in the past five years. The authors discuss how this approach enabled small teams to build energy-efficient, cost-effective, and industry-competitive high-performance microprocessors in a matter of months. Their agile methodology relies on rapid iterative improvement of fabricatable prototypes using hardware generators written in Chisel, a new hardware description language embedded in a modern programming language. The parameterized generators construct highly customized systems based on the free, open, and extensible RISC-V platform. The authors present a case study of one such prototype featuring a RISC-V vector microprocessor integrated with a switched-capacitor DC-DC converter alongside an adaptive clock generator in a 28-nm, fully depleted silicon-on-insulator process. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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