ARGUS: A Framework for Rapid Design and Prototype of Heterogeneous Multicore Systems in FPGA

Multicore systems are an integral part of today´s embedded systems which allow for improved performance and reduced power consumption. Designing and creating a multicore system is challenging. Verification and validation of the designed multicore system incur significant cost and effort. A simpler design process will allow even the software engineers to design multicore systems and evaluate their applications for performance and power. In order to assist the designers, engineers and users alike to easily design multicore, we propose a framework in this paper which allows design and prototyping of multicore systems in an FPGA within hours. Our framework allows rapid design and automated prototyping, and improves validation and verification of the entire multicore system. Two use cases are evaluated to demonstrate the applicability of our framework.