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VPR 5.0: FPGA CAD and architecture exploration tools with single-driver routing, heterogeneity and process scaling

Published:28 December 2011Publication History
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Abstract

The VPR toolset has been widely used in FPGA architecture and CAD research, but has not evolved over the past decade. This article describes and illustrates the use of a new version of the toolset that includes four new features: first, it supports a broad range of single-driver routing architectures, which have superior architectural and electrical properties over the prior multidriver approach (and which is now employed in the majority of FPGAs sold). Second, it can now model, for placement and routing a heterogeneous selection of hard logic blocks. This is a key (but not final) step toward the incluion of blocks such as memory and multipliers. Third, we provide optimized electrical models for a wide range of architectures in different process technologies, including a range of area-delay trade-offs for each single architecture. Finally, to maintain robustness and support future development the release includes a set of regression tests for the software.

To illustrate the use of the new features, we explore several architectural issues: the FPGA area efficiency versus logic block granularity, the effect of single-driver routing, and a simple use of the heterogeneity to explore the impact of hard multipliers on wiring track count.

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems
        ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems  Volume 4, Issue 4
        December 2011
        179 pages
        ISSN:1936-7406
        EISSN:1936-7414
        DOI:10.1145/2068716
        Issue’s Table of Contents

        Copyright © 2011 ACM

        Publisher

        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 28 December 2011
        • Accepted: 1 September 2010
        • Revised: 1 August 2009
        • Received: 1 May 2009
        Published in trets Volume 4, Issue 4

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