RAPANUI: A case study in Rapid Prototyping for Multiprocessor System-on-Chip

This paper describes a case study in a new rapid prototyping-based design framework for exploring and validating complex multiprocessor architectures for multimedia applications. The goal of the presented methodology is to speed up and improve the verification flow of a multiprocessor system that will finally be implemented as an ASIC. The case study consists of a 64-bit compatible AMBA AHB system bus which connects up to 14 32-Bit RISC processors to a host interface. A typical parallel computing application has been implemented for the parameterized multiprocessor system. The employed FPGA emulation environment increases by up to 200 the simulation frequency of the global system on a workstation (2.2 GHz AMD Dual Opteron with 8 GB RAM). Moreover a standalone emulation can be performed at the maximum achievable frequency (65 MHz).