Shared Memory Multicore MicroBlaze System with SMP Linux Support

• Published in: ACM transactions on reconfigurable technology and systems 2016-09, Vol.9 (4), p.1-22
• Main Authors: Matthews, Eric, Shannon, Lesley, Fedorova, Alexandra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bandwidth; Exception handling; Field programmable gate arrays; Hierarchies; Microprocessors; Timing devices; UNIX (operating system); Windows (computer programs)
• ISSN: 1936-7406; 1936-7414
• DOI: 10.1145/2870638

In this work, we present PolyBlaze, a scalable and configurable multicore platform for FPGA-based embedded systems and systems research. PolyBlaze is an extension of the MicroBlaze soft processor, leveraging the configurability of the MicroBlaze and bringing it into the multicore era with Linux Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP) support. This work details the hardware modifications required for the MicroBlaze processor and its software stack to enable fully validated SMP operations, including atomic operation support, shared interrupts and timers, and exception handling. New in this work, we present a scalable and flexible memory hierarchy optimized for Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), which manages atomic operations and provides support for future flexible memory hierarchies and heterogeneous systems. Also new is an in-depth analysis of key performance characteristics, including memory bandwidth, latency, and resource usage. For all system configurations, bandwidth is found to scale linearly with the addition of processor cores until the memory interface is saturated. Additionally, average memory latency remains constant until the memory interface is saturated; after which, it scales linearly with each additional processor core.