CIFER: A 12nm, 16mm2, 22-Core SoC with a 1541 LUT6/mm2 1.92 MOPS/LUT, Fully Synthesizable, CacheCoherent, Embedded FPGA
Ting-Jung Chang, Ang Li, Fei Gao, Tuan Ta, Georgios Tziantzioulis, Yanghui Ou, Moyang Wang, Jinzheng Tu, Kaifeng Xu, Paul J. Jackson, August Ning, Grigory Chirkov, Marcelo Orenes-Vera, Shady O. Agwa, Xiaoyu Yan, Eric Tang, Jonathan Balkind, Christopher Batten, David Wentzlaff · 2023
Embedded FPGAs (eFPGA) are increasingly being used in SoCs, enabling post-silicon hardware specialization. Existing CPU-eFPGA SoCs have three deficiencies. First, their low core count hinders efficient execution of thread-level-parallel workloads. Second, noncoherent or partially coherent CPU-eFPGA integration inhibits dynamic, random memory sharing. Third, the use of full-custom circuits makes proprietary eFPGAs technology-dependent, inflexible in physical layout, and lacking architectural customizability.