Open-Scale: A Scalable, Open-Source NOC-based MPSoC for Design Space Exploration

As complexity of embedded system increases, configurable hardware is becoming more attractive because it provides a fast and efficient basis for design development. As a consequence, one of the most promising embedded architecture consists in the replication of Processing Elements (PEs) connected through a Network-on-Chip (NoC). Such architectures provide computation parallelism, scalability, and reduced design time thanks to reusability. This paper describes the development of a scalable, distributed memory, open source NoC-based platform called Open-Scale and its implementation into FPGA devices. The main objective of this platform is to provide a complete framework for research development on NoC-based distributed memory MPSoCs.