Rendering FPGAs to Multi-Core Embedded Computing
Project details
Total cost:
EUR 3 703 578EU contribution:
EUR 2 719 999Coordinated in:
Czech RepublicCall for proposal:
FP7-ICT-2009-4See other projects for this callFunding scheme:
CP - Collaborative project (generic)Description
To develop an approach and a tool-chain to improve productivity by accelerating development cycles of reconfigurable systems by more than two orders of magnitudeThe ever increasing need for additional product functionalities, safety, and security, drives many product suppliers towards the need for more and more platform performance. For instance, next-generation UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are expected to be much more complex in terms of sensing. As such, the analysis and decision-making processes will lead to a higher performance requirement, together with the need of low cost solutions. Another example is audio encoding, where better performance and improved encoding quality are features of major interest. While these requirements are met by implementing as many functions as possible in hardware it is certainly desirable to host product functionalities on as few hardware platforms as possible in order to reduce size, weight and power of products.
Reconfiguration has been recognized as a key technique to achieve these goals. However, designing reconfigurable systems is an extremely cumbersome and error-prone process. As a result, the potential of reconfiguration is only achieved at high design effort and cost.
REFLECT aims at developing an approach and a tool-chain to improve productivity by accelerating development cycles of reconfigurable systems by more than two orders of magnitude.
Objective
The relentless increase in capacity of Field-Programmable Gate-Arrays (FPGAs) makes them vehicles of choice for both prototypes and final products requiring on-chip multi-core, heterogeneous and reconfigurable systems. Multiple cores can be embedded as hard- or soft-macros, have customizable instruction sets, multiple distributed RAMs and/or configurable interconnections. Their flexibility allows them to achieve orders of magnitude better performance than conventional computing systems via customization. Programming these systems, however, is extremely cumbersome and error-prone and as a result their true potential is only achieved at an unreasonably high effort.This project will develop, implement and evaluate a novel compilation and synthesis system approach for FPGA-based platforms. We rely on Aspect-Oriented (AO) Specifications to covey critical domain knowledge to a mapping engine while preserving the advantages of a high-level imperative programming paradigm in early software development and portability. We leverage AO specifications and a set of transformations to generate an intermediate representation using an extensible mapping language (LARA). LARA specifications will allow the exploration of alternative architectures and run-time adaptive strategies enabling the generation of flexible hardware cores that can be easily incorporated into larger multi-core designs. We will evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach using partner-provided codes from the domain of audio/video processing and real-time avionics.We expect the technology developed here to be integrated by our industrial partners, a leading compilation tool supplier for reconfigurable systems and a worldwide solution supplier of embedded high-performance systems. The academic partners will promote human resources with technical excellence in the area of architectures and software development thus enabling the sustainability of a vibrant information technology European fabric.
Coordinator contact
Coordinator
EU contribution: EUR 260 525
V PARKU CHODOV 2325/16
148 00 PRAHA
Czech Republic
Participants
EU contribution: EUR 385 400
KAISERSTRASSE 12
76131 KARLSRUHE
Germany
EU contribution: EUR 326 137
STEVINWEG 1
2628 CN DELFT
Netherlands
EU contribution: EUR 393 649
DE RUYTERKADE 113
1011AB AMSTERDAM
Netherlands
EU contribution: EUR 224 852
Rua Dona Estefania
1000 Lisboa
Portugal
EU contribution: EUR 0
RUA DR ROBERTO FRIAS SN
4200 465 PORTO
Portugal
EU contribution: EUR 275 362
PRACA GOMES TEIXEIRA
4099 002 PORTO
Portugal
EU contribution: EUR 302 810
RUA ALVES REDOL 9
1000 029 LISBOA
Portugal
EU contribution: EUR 472 615
SOUTH KENSINGTON CAMPUS EXHIBITION ROAD
SW7 2AZ LONDON
United Kingdom
EU contribution: EUR 78 649
BUL HRISTOFOR COLUMB
1528 SOFIA
Bulgaria