Data streaming and simd support for the microblaze architecture
Paul E. Marks, Cameron D. Patterson · 2009
The MicroBlaze architecture is a configurable "soft core" processor by Xilinx intended for use in embedded FPGA applications. Some embedded data processing algorithms benefit from the use of vectorized code and streaming I/O. Thus, configurable extensions that add these to the MicroBlaze architecture are developed. We discuss the current architecture, the necessary modifications, the methods employed, and analyze the theoretical gains. We then study the full synthesis of an example hardware platform with and without the extensions, comparing the expected performance of each. Following that, we discuss the work toward integrating with Xilinx's development tools, which allows simple and rapid deployment of the extended architecture. Modifications to the software toolchain are discussed as they pertain to extending the instruction set. Finally, we conclude with an assessment of the developed extensions and future work that could make them even more useful for reconfigurable, high-performance embedded applications.