Title
An open-source HyperTransport core
Abstract
This article presents the design of a generic HyperTransport (HT) core. HyperTransport is a packet-based interconnect technology for low-latency, high-bandwidth point-to-point connections. It is specially optimized to achieve a very low latency. The core has been verified in system using an FPGA. This exhaustive verification and the generic design allow the mapping to both ASICs and FPGAs. The implementation described in this work supports a 16-bit link width, as used by Opteron processors. On a Xilinx Virtex-4 FX60, the core supports a link frequency of 400 MHz DDR and offers a maximum bidirectional bandwidth of 3.2GB/s. The in-system verification has been performed using a custom FPGA board that has been plugged into a HyperTransport extension connector (HTX) of a standard Opteron-based motherboard. HTX slots in Opteron-based motherboards allow very high-bandwidth, low-latency communication, since the HTX device is directly connected to one of the HyperTransport links of the processor. Performance analysis shows a unidirectional payload bandwidth of 1.4GB/s and a read latency of 180 ns. The HT core in combination with the HTX board is an ideal base for prototyping systems and implementing FPGA coprocessors. The HT core is available as open source.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1145/1391732.1391734
TRETS
Keywords
Field
DocType
rtl,hypertransport extension connector,htx device,hypertransport,hypertransport link,prototyping,ht core,open-source hypertransport core,htx,htx slot,generic hypertransport,htx board,16-bit link width,fpga,fpga coprocessors,custom fpga board,low latency,point to point
Motherboard,Computer science,Network packet,Parallel computing,Field-programmable gate array,Real-time computing,Bandwidth (signal processing),Latency (engineering),Coprocessor,HyperTransport,Payload,Embedded system
Journal
Volume
Issue
Citations 
1
3
13
PageRank 
References 
Authors
1.30
6
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
David Slogsnat1353.55
Alexander Giese2292.84
Mondrian Nüssle3263.59
Ulrich Brüning47611.64