The design of AMBA AHB/VCI wrapper

Utilizing a core-centric approach, we can develop plug-compatible components and greatly maximize design reuse. IP blocks and buses with standard core interface can be plugged directly together with little or no custom interfacing, saving an amount of design time. This paper presents the design of AMBA AHB/VCI wrapper which is intended for connecting VCI-based cores to the AMBA AHB bus. The paper details the comparison and contrast between the AMBA AHB bus protocol and BVCI interface protocol. The two key techniques: quasi-pipelined operation and pre-fetching is proposed to reduce performance overhead. We also take its configurability into consideration to enhance the flexibility of application. Finally, the paper discusses the practicability of VCI usage with an on-chip bus.