Symmetric Multiprocessing on Programmable Chips Made Easy

Austin Hung (1) , William Bishop (1) , Andrew Kennings (1)

1 ECE - Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering [Waterloo]

Vendor-provided softcore processors often support advanced features such as caching that work well in uniprocessor or uncoupled multiprocessor architectures. However, it is a challenge to implement Symmetric Multiprocessor on a Programmable Chip (SMPoPC) systems using such processors. This paper presents an implementation of a tightly-coupled, cache-coherent symmetric multiprocessing architecture using a vendor-provided softcore processor. Experimental results show that this implementation can be achieved without invasive changes to the vendor-provided softcore processor and without degradation of the performance of the memory system.

Domaines: Architectures Matérielles [cs.AR]; Electronique

Austin Hung, William Bishop, Andrew Kennings. Symmetric Multiprocessing on Programmable Chips Made Easy. DATE'05, Mar 2005, Munich, Germany. pp.240-245. ⟨hal-00181522⟩