Custom instruction hardware integration within a SoC hybrid environment

Abstract

Traditionally, common processor augmentation solutions have involved the addition of coprocessors or the datapath integration of custom instructions within extensible processors as Instruction Set Extensions (ISE). Rarely is the hybrid option of using both techniques explored. Much research already exists concerning the identification and selection of custom hardware blocks from hardware/software partitioning techniques, but the question of how to best use this hardware within a user system where both coprocessors and datapath augmentations are possible remains. This paper looks to extend existing ISE algorithms which provide custom hardware as dataflow graphs (DFG) and place them appropriately within a hybrid System-on-Chip (SoC) using standard combinatorial optimization techniques. A combinatorial model is presented to address this placement issue and is applied to two well known kernel programs. We further show that such standard techniques can execute within a reasonable time frame alleviating the need for heuristics.