Vector processing unit: A RISC-V based SIMD Co-processor for Embedded Processing

Research output: Contribution to conferencesPaperContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

The computational intensity in embedded processing applications is increasing. This requires domain-specific embedded platforms in order to achieve maximum performance per watt of the system. With the arrival of open-source instruction set architectures such as RISC-V, and different domain-specific architecture development toolchains, the trend of application-specific architectures is increasing. In this paper, a parameterizable Vector Processing Unit (VPU) is presented based on a subset of V-extension from the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) for embedded processing. Two key configurable parameters for the proposed VPU are vector length (VLEN) and the number of execution lanes. These parameters allow design space exploration for the VPU for different configurations and help to understand which application scenarios would fit for certain configurations. The proposed VPU was integrated into a 32-bit RISC-V processor. For maximum parallelization configuration, 2.3 x fewer cycles per instructions were achieved as compared to a RISC-V processor. Moreover, a relative cycle gain of 33-73% was achieved for different configurations as compared with the RISC-V processor.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages30-34
Number of pages5
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Peer-reviewedYes

Conference

Title24th Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design
Abbreviated titleDSD 2021
Conference number24
Duration1 - 3 September 2021
Locationonline
City
CountryItaly

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0003-2571-8441/work/142240501
Scopus 85125762981
unpaywall 10.1109/dsd53832.2021.00014
Mendeley 8e37f69c-866e-3e07-90bc-eeb52b6245b6

Keywords

Keywords

  • RISC-V, Co-processor, Field programmable gate array (FPGA), RISC-V, SIMD, System-on-chip (SoC), Vector processing