Title
Exploiting process locality of reference in RTL simulation acceleration
Abstract
With the increased size and complexity of digital designs, the time required to simulate them has also increased. Traditional simulation accelerators utilize FPGAs in a static configuration, but this paper presents an analysis of six register transfer level (RTL) code bases showing that only a subset of the simulation processes is executing at any given time, a quality called executive locality of reference. The efficiency of acceleration hardware can be improved when it is used as a process cache. Run-time adaptations are made to ensure that acceleration resources are not wasted on idle processes, and these adaptations may be affected through process migration between software and hardware. An implementation of an embedded, FPGA-based migration system is described, and empirical data are obtained for use in mathematical and algorithmic modeling of more complex acceleration systems.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1155/2008/369040
EURASIP J. Emb. Sys.
Field
DocType
Volume
Locality of reference,Computer science,Cache,Parallel computing,Process migration,Field-programmable gate array,Real-time computing,Software,Acceleration,Hardware acceleration,Register-transfer level,Embedded system
Journal
2008,
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
369040
1687-3955
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.37
4
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Aric D. Blumer121.11
Cameron D. Patterson25911.71