Design space exploration for FPGA-based hybrid multicore architecture

This paper presents a parameterized system-level design framework, which enables rapid and powerful research for hybrid multicore architecture exploration and hardware/software co-design. The framework comprises the component-based hardware design and application compiler, which make it easy for a designer to build stream-oriented applications with FPGA-based hybrid multicore architectures. The high modularity and parameterization of the framework supports fast multicore architecture exploration of different topologies, routing schemes, processor types, customized hardware processing units and memory system organizations. The compiler tool chain is used to map C/C++ based applications onto the soft processing units. Experimental results targeting the JPEG encoding application demonstrate the feasibility and performance improvement of this framework.