Maico Cassel dos Santos1, Tianyu Jia, Martin Cochet, Karthik Swaminathan, Joseph Zuckerman, Paolo Mantovani, Davide Giri, Jeff Jun Zhang, Erik Jens Loscalzo, Gabriele Tombesi, Kevin Tien, Nandhini Chandramoorthy, John-David Wellman, David Brooks, Gu-Yeon Wei, Kenneth Shepard, Luca P. Carloni, and Pradip Bose Columbia University, Harvard University, IBM Research A Scalable Methodology for Agile Chip Development with Open-Source Hardware Components. 22 March 2023, IEEE/ACM International Conference On Computer Aided Design (ICCAD).
Abstract
We present a scalable methodology for the agile physical design of tile-based heterogeneous system-on-chip (SoC) architectures that simplifies the reuse and integration of open-source hardware components. The methodology leverages the regularity of the on-chip communication infrastructure, which is based on a multi-plane network-on-chip (NoC), and the modularity of socket interfaces, which connect the tiles to the NoC. Each socket also provides its tile with a set of platform services, including independent clocking and voltage control. As a result, the physical design of each tile can be decoupled from its location in the top-level floorplan of the SoC and the overall SoC design can benefit from a hierarchical timing-closure flow, design reuse and, if necessary, fast respin. With the proposed methodology we completed two SoC tapeouts of increasing complexity, which illustrate its capabilities and the resulting gains in terms of design productivity.