Title :
ZUMA: An Open FPGA Overlay Architecture
Author :
Brant, Alexander ; Lemieux, Guy G F
Author_Institution :
Dept. of ECE, UBC, Vancouver, WA, USA
fDate :
April 29 2012-May 1 2012
Abstract :
This paper presents the ZUMA open FPGA overlay architecture. It is an open-source, cross-compatible embedded FPGA architecture that is intended to overlay on top of an existing FPGA, in essence an ”FPGA-on-an-FPGA.” This approach has a number of benefits, including bitstream compatibility between different vendors and parts, compatibility with open FPGA tool Hows, and the ability to embed some programmable logic into systems on FPGAs without the need for releasing or recompiling the master netlist. These options can enhance design possibilities and improve designer productivity. Previous attempts to map an FPGA architecture into a commercial FPGA have had an area penalty of 100x at best [4]. Through careful architectural and implementation choices to exploit low-level elements of the host architecture, ZUMA reduces this penalty to as low as 40x. Using the VTR (VPR6) academic tool How, we have been able to compile the entire MCNC benchmark suite to ZUMA. We invite authors of other tool Hows to target ZUMA.
Keywords :
embedded systems; field programmable gate arrays; programmable logic devices; public domain software; reconfigurable architectures; FPGA-on-an-FPGA; MCNC benchmark suite; VPR6 academic tool; VTR academic tool; ZUMA open FPGA overlay architecture; bitstream compatibility; commercial FPGA; designer productivity; low-level elements; master netlist; open FPGA tool; open-source cross-compatible embedded FPGA architecture; programmable logic; Design automation; Field programmable gate arrays; Hardware design languages; Routing; Switches; Table lookup; Field programmable gate arrays; Reconfigurable architectures; productivity;
Conference_Titel :
Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), 2012 IEEE 20th Annual International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Toronto, ON
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-1605-7
DOI :
10.1109/FCCM.2012.25