A RISC-V Coprocessor for Seamless Integration of Stream-Based Accelerators
Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/Report › Conference contribution › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
The increasing computational intensity of modern applications such as deep learning or computer vision has called for a shift in the focus of research towards heterogeneous architectures with specialized accelerators integrated with a system of general-purpose computing cores. However, integrating such accelerators requires deep hardware expertise, posing significant challenges due to steep learning curves and long development times. This work provides a modular and extensible hardware platform to seamlessly integrate stream-based HLS/RTL accelerators with a RISC-V-based general-purpose core. The platform extends the RISC-V ISA by providing a set of custom instructions to control and manage multiple stream-based accelerators directly through the RISC-V core. The accelerators are hosted by a coprocessor unit tightly coupled to the RISC-V core through the open-source eXtension Interface. The proposed RISC-V-based coprocessor features a modular and flexible architecture which can be configured with user-defined custom stream-based accelerators. The implementation of this coprocessor on an AMD/Xilinx RFSoC 4x2 board shows a lightweight design, occupying less than 4% of the available LUTs, and an evaluation of the coprocessor architecture indicates that data-intensive applications using multiple hardware modules sequentially or in parallel benefit the most.
Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | 2025 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops (IPDPSW) |
| Pages | 1221-1227 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| ISBN (electronic) | 979-8-3315-2643-6 |
| Publication status | Published - 7 Jun 2025 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Publication series
| Series | IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing Workshops and Phd Forum (IPDPSW) |
|---|---|
| ISSN | 2639-3867 |
Conference
| Title | 39th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium |
|---|---|
| Abbreviated title | IPDPS 2025 |
| Conference number | 39 |
| Duration | 3 - 7 June 2025 |
| Website | |
| Location | Politecnico di Milano |
| City | Milan |
| Country | Italy |
External IDs
| ORCID | /0000-0003-2571-8441/work/190571648 |
|---|---|
| Mendeley | 40698b80-b96b-3bbe-9b8b-5a2b94aefb16 |
| Scopus | 105015365697 |
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- Computer architecture, Coprocessors, Deep learning, Distributed databases, Distributed processing, Field programmable gate arrays, Hardware acceleration, Software, Table lookup, Throughput, FPGAs, Hardware Accelerators, High-Level Synthesis, RISC-V