L2: FPGA HARDWARE 18-545: ADVANCED DIGITAL DESIGN PROJECT FALL 2015 BRANDON LUCIA
18-545: FALL 2014 2 Admin stuff Project Proposals happen on Monday Be prepared to give an in-class presentation Lab 1 is due Wednesday, Sept. 16th Reading Assignment #1 due today Submit a PDF/text file, don't fill in the web form Team assignments are done
18-545: FALL 2014 3 Admin Stuff Status reports due today No word docs, please! Be specific about what happened/is going to happen Talk about what YOU did/will do, not just what your group did Grades on the way, as general feedback
18-545: FALL 2014 4 Game Plan Overview Why use FPGAs? FPGA Internals Caveat: I will use Xilinx specific terminology since that s the FPGA company you will be using. Beware that other companies use different terms
FPGA Overview Field Programmable Gate Array Array of generic logic gates Gates where logic function can be programmed Programmable interconnection between gates Fielded systems can be programmed i.e. post-fabrication
18-545: FALL 2014 6 Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA
18-545: FALL 2014 7 Design Platform Virtex-5 Development System Xilinx XC5VLX110T FPGA 17280 slices of CLB goodness 256MB DDR2 (SODIMM) DVI Video port VGA port is for input 10/100/1000 Ethernet port Audio Codec (AC97) USB2 port 16x2 LCD, RS-232 Compact Flash card slot Expansion connectors
18-545: FALL 2014 8 Game Plan Overview Why use FPGAs? FPGA Internals
Why use FPGAs? System designers have a Goldilocks problem Off-the-shelf parts are not efficient enough Custom ASICs cost too much Need a just right solution
ASIC Design Difficult to design Large and complex Issues in advanced processes Interconnect delay Device leakage Power density constraints Expensive to design / fabricate Mask set costs Non-recurring engineering costs Need a high-volume, high-profit market to justify costs!
Energy Efficiency (MOPS/mW) Area Efficiency (MOPS/mm2) 10000 1000 Microprocessors 100 10 1 0.1 0.01 DSPs ASICs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Efficiency View An efficiency gap exists between ASICs and CPUs! N. Zhang, et. al, The Cost of Flexibility in Systems on a Chip Design for Signal Processing Applications
Development Cost + Device Cost ASIC Trend FPGA Trend Decreasing FPGA unit cost pushing crossover point to the right FPGA solution has a lower total cost Additional ASIC costs: Increasing NRE charge 58% are late to market -- impacts total volumes shipped ASIC cycle longer than some market windows Over 50% need to be respun Total Units ASIC solution has a lower total cost (Courtesy Xilinx, Inc.) Economic View FPGAs: High package costs ($300+), low NRE costs ASICs: Low package costs (pennies), high NRE costs ($600K+)
18-545: FALL 2014 13 FPGA Advantages Higher performance than CPU solution Lower power than CPU solution (usually) Low NRE costs Off-the-shelf part designed by FPGA vendor You are sharing NRE costs with all other customers Fast design time Low time-to-market Fast re-design / re-fabrication time Easy to correct an error, to add functionality, in response to spec change Can even change product after deployment
18-545: FALL 2014 14 FPGA Disadvantages High per-part costs Good for low to middle volume applications High volume applications should consider ASICs Perhaps use FPGA for prototyping Lower performance than ASIC Higher power than ASIC More specialized design skills than programming a CPU
Example uses of FPGAs Rapid Prototyping Emulation of ASIC design Design exploration Verification Shipping product Networking Military Microsoft Bing Datacenters Reconfigurable Computing
18-545: FALL 2014 16 Game Plan Overview Why use FPGAs? FPGA Internals
FPGA Breakdown 3 Basic components Configurable Logic Blocks General purpose interconnect I/O Blocks Advanced components Hard macros CPUs Block RAM Multipliers Specialized components VIRTEX-II PRO
XILINX XC3020 CLB (64 TOTAL) I/O BLOCK (64 TOTAL) GENERAL PURPOSE INTERCONNECT IOBS HAVE DIRECT ACCESS TO ADJACENT CLBS SWITCH MATRIX (COURTESY XILINX, INC.)
ROUTING EVEN MORE ZOOMED IN VIEW ZOOMED IN VIEW OF THE CLB MATRIX OF THE FPGA SPECIFIC INGRESS AND EGRESS CONNECTION OPTIONS (BLACK DOTS) ARE AVAILABLE (COURTESY XILINX, INC.)
ROUTING: THE SWITCH MATRIX EACH MATRIX HAS 5 CONNECTIONS PER SIDE (COURTESY XILINX, INC.)
ROUTING: THE SWITCH MATRIX EACH MATRIX HAS 5 CONNECTIONS PER SIDE ONLY CERTAIN CONNECTION PATTERNS ARE POSSIBLE (COURTESY XILINX, INC.)
18-545: FALL 2014 22 Hierarchical Routing Spartan-2 and more recent have different length connections between switch matrices Local roads, limited access roads, interstate highways Routes across entire chip don t burn lots of short connections
Configurable Logic Blocks CLBs get more and more stuff crammed in them over time XC3K family had LUT (5 variable input, 2 FF values, 2 outputs), 2 FFs, clock enable, FF reset (direct / global) and 9 muxes ~51 bits of configuration SRAM per CLB (COURTESY XILINX, INC.)
What s a Look-up-table (LUT)? A direct implementation of a truth table, using memory LUT inputs are memory address values LUT outputs are the memory data value A B C D LUT F A B C D F 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 A B F A B C D F 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 A C D B F 18-545: FALL 2014 24
18-545: FALL 2014 25 Another View of LUTs D Q D Q Can view LUT as 16:1 mux 16 D D Q Q 16 x 1 mux Output Inputs are mux select Config sets mux data inputs Logically same as 16x1 memory D D Q Q Can compact logic if you can route inputs to mux data inputs Inputs Programmed as part of configuration bitstream
Look Up Table Additional Functionality Can be configured as: Shift register (16 regs) Small memory (16 bits) Distributed RAM! Some other FPGAs use muxes instead of memories to implement the core combinational logic
Spartan-2 CLB Spartan-2 has 2 LUTs (4 input each) feeding a 3rd LUT, 2 FFs (with Preset/Reset, Enable, posedge or negedge clocks) and 16 muxes 12 inputs (plus clock), 4 outputs 18-545: FALL 2014 (COURTESY XILINX, INC.) 27
Spartan-3 CLBs are composed of 4 slices Organized as 2 pairs, one of which is optimized for memory access Each slice has 2 FFs and 2 LUTs (COURTESY XILINX, INC.)
FPGA Families extend Architecture Devices are built, with more capability, but around the same basic architecture Some additional capabilities Low voltage versions Faster clock rates Different packaging options (Courtesy Xilinx, Inc.)
The need for more stuff CompEs cannot design on logic, routing, I/O alone Extreme case from early 90s 16 port ATM switch, designed on a single board! FPGAs (XC3Ks) FIFO memory chips Design is limited by I/O to memory chips--bring them on-chip 30
Other Stuff Clock managers Global clock buffering, distribution DCM: eliminate skew, phase shifts, multiply or divide clock Memory Block RAM Distributed RAM (repurposed LUTs) Shift Registers Dedicated Multiplexers Carry Look-Ahead Generators I/O Blocks SelectIO supports 18 standards (single, differential, various voltage levels,...) Embedded Multipliers 31
Hard Macros Hard macros Block RAMs Multipliers CPUs Soft macros HDL
Block RAMs Distributed RAM Use LUTs as memories Low density Poor performance! Block RAM Large-ish dedicated memory blocks Xilinx BRAMs = 18Kb Some configurability Dual-port Data width / depth FIFO, CAM, etc.
Multipliers 18x18 signed 2 s-complement multiplier Two 18b inputs One 36b output 18b enough for many DSP applications Can gang multiple units together for wider data Faster and lower power than multiplier from CLBs
CPUs PowerPC 405 XC2VP30 has 2 Embedded PowerPC 405 cores Embedded L1 I and D caches No FPU
CPU Connectivity: PLB and OPB IBM Core Connect Processor Local Bus (PLB) - fast on-chip communication On-Chip Peripheral Bus (OPB) - optimized for periphs. (UART, etc) Device Control Register bus (DCR) - used to send and set config.
CPU Connectivity: PLB and OPB (cont.)
CPU Connectivity: OCM On-Chip Memory controller CPU ß à block RAM 2 OCMs I and D Direct, fast interface Can use dual-port BRAMs for producer-consumer link to FPGA fabric
18-545: FALL 2014 39 CPU Links A lot more details on the embedded CPU http://www.xilinx.com/bvdocs/userguides/ppc_ref_guide.pdf http://direct.xilinx.com/bvdocs/userguides/ug018.pdf http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/productfamilies/ CoreConnect_Bus_Architecture
Zynq 7000 Advanced Microcontroller Bus Interface + Advanced extensible Interconnect! To memory, FPGA fabric, I/O & Peripherals! AMBA = ARM s attempt at The One True Interface
Configuration Storage Lots of configuration bits WL LUTs, routing, I/O configuration Xilinx XC2VP30 has >11Mb Configuration storage technologies Volatile SRAM cells Non-volatile FLASH, EEPROM Anti-fuse bit 6T SRAM cell bit_b Actel anti-fuse
18-545: FALL 2014 42 Configuration How to load (scan) configuration bits (bitstream) Connect all configuration registers into single long shift register Serially clock in configuration bits Most designs use standard scan interface (JTAG) developed for test Bitstream source Non-volatile memory On-board FLASH, EEPROM, serial memory External media (CF card) Attached workstation Can encrypt bitstream to conceal configuration
18-545: FALL 2014 43 Major FPGA Vendors SRAM-based FPGAs Xilinx Altera Atmel Share over 60% of the market Lattice Semiconductor Flash & antifuse FPGAs Actel Corp. Quick Logic Corp. Lattice Semiconductor Xilinx (system-in-a-package solution)