Resource-bounded multicore emulation using Beefarm
Venue
Microprocessors and Microsystems (2012)
Publication Year
2012
Authors
Oriol Arcas, Nehir Sonmez, Gokhan Sayilar, Satnam Singh, Osman S. Unsal, Adrian Cristal, Ibrahim Hur, Mateo Valero
BibTeX
Abstract
In this article, we present the Beefarm infrastructure for FPGA-based
multiprocessor emulation, a popular research topic of the last few years both in
FPGA and computer architecture communities. We explain how we modify and extend a
MIPS-based open-source soft core, we discuss various design tradeoffs to make
efficient use of the bounded resources available on chip and we demonstrate
superior scalability compared to traditional software instruction set simulators
through experimental results running Software Transactional Memory (STM)
benchmarks. Based on our experience, we comment on the pros and cons and the future
trends of using hardware-based emulation for multicore research.
