DocumentCode :
1758393
Title :
Quantifying the Gap Between FPGA and Custom CMOS to Aid Microarchitectural Design
Author :
Wong, Hang ; Betz, Vaughn ; Rose, J.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Volume :
22
Issue :
10
fYear :
2014
fDate :
Oct. 2014
Firstpage :
2067
Lastpage :
2080
Abstract :
This paper compares the delay and area of a comprehensive set of processor building block circuits when implemented on custom CMOS and FPGA substrates, then uses these results to show how soft processor microarchitectures should be different from those of hard processors. We find that the ratios of the custom CMOS versus FPGA area for different building blocks varies considerably more than the speed ratios, thus, area ratios have more impact on microarchitecture choices. Complete processor cores on an FPGA use 17-27 × more area (“area ratio”) than the same design implemented in custom CMOS. Building blocks with dedicated hardware support on FPGAs such as SRAMs, adders, and multipliers are particularly area-efficient (2-7×), while multiplexers and content-addressable memories (CAM) are particularly area-inefficient (>100×). Applying these results, we find out-of-order soft processors should use physical register file organizations to minimize CAM size.
Keywords :
CMOS integrated circuits; SRAM chips; adders; content-addressable storage; field programmable gate arrays; integrated circuit design; microprocessor chips; multiplexing equipment; CAM; FPGA; SRAM; adders; content addressable memories; custom CMOS; field programmable gate arrays; hard processors; microarchitectural design; multiplexers; multipliers; processor building block circuits; processor cores; soft processor microarchitectures; CMOS integrated circuits; Delays; Field programmable gate arrays; Microarchitecture; Random access memory; Registers; Substrates;
fLanguage :
English
Journal_Title :
Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, IEEE Transactions on
Publisher :
ieee
ISSN :
1063-8210
Type :
jour
DOI :
10.1109/TVLSI.2013.2284281
Filename :
6663714
Link To Document :
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