[62] | 1 | \subsection{Dissemination} |
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| 2 | |
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| 3 | The Coach project will bring new scientific results in various fields, such as high level synthesis, |
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| 4 | hardware/software codesign, virtual prototyping, harware oriented compilation technics, |
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| 5 | automatic parallelisation, etc. These results will be presented in the relevant International |
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| 6 | Conferences, namely DATE, DAC, or ICCAD. |
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| 7 | |
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| 8 | More generally, the Coach infrastructure and the design flow supported by the Coach |
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| 9 | tools and libraries will be promoted by proposing tutorials on FPGA oriented system level synthesis |
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| 10 | in various worshops and conferences. |
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| 11 | |
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| 12 | Following the general policy of the SoCLib platform, the COACH project will be an |
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| 13 | open infrastructure, and the Coach tools and libraries will available in the framework |
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| 14 | of the SoCLib WEB server. This server will be maintened by the UPMC/LIP6 laboratory. |
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| 15 | |
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| 16 | \subsection{Exploitation of results} |
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| 17 | |
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| 18 | The main goal of the Coach project is to help SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) |
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| 19 | to enter the world of MPSoC technologies. For small companies, the cost is a primary concern. |
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| 20 | Moreover, these companies have not always in-home expertise in hardware design and VHDL modelling. |
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| 21 | As the fabrication costs of an ASIC is generally too high for SMEs, the Coach project focus |
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| 22 | on FPGA technologies. Regarding the design tools, the cost of advanced ESL (Electronic System Design) |
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| 23 | tools is an issue, and the Coach project will follow the same general policy as the SoCLib platform : |
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| 24 | |
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| 25 | \begin{itemize} |
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| 26 | \item |
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| 27 | All software tools supporting the Coach design flow will be available as free software. |
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| 28 | All academic partners contributing to the Coach project agreed to distribute the ESL software |
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| 29 | tools under the same GPL license as the SoCLib tools. |
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| 30 | \item |
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| 31 | The SystemC simulation modelsafor the hardware components |
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| 32 | used by the SoCLib architectural template will be distributed as free software |
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| 33 | under a non-contaminant LGPL license. |
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| 34 | \item |
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| 35 | The synthesizable VHDL models supporting the neutral architectural template |
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| 36 | (corresponding to the SocLib IP cores library), will have two modes of dissemination. |
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| 37 | A typical MPSoC contains not only dedicated, synthesized coprocessors. It contains |
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| 38 | also general purpose, reusable components, such as processor cores, memory controllers |
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| 39 | optimised cache controllers, peripheral controllers, or bus controllers. |
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| 40 | For non commercial use (i.e. research or education in an academic context, |
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| 41 | or feasbility study in an industrial context), the synthesizable VHDL models will be freely available. |
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| 42 | For commercial use, commercial licenses will be negociated between the owners and the customers. |
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| 43 | \item |
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| 44 | The proprietary ALTERA and XILINX IP core libraries are commercial products |
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| 45 | that are not involved by the free software policy, but these libraries will be supported by the |
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| 46 | synthesis tools developped in the Coach project. |
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| 47 | \end{itemize} |
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| 48 | |
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| 49 | This general approach is supported by a large number of SMEs, as demonstrated by the "letters |
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| 50 | of interest" that have been collected during the preparation of the project : |
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| 51 | \begin{itemize} |
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| 52 | \item |
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| 53 | \item |
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| 54 | \item |
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| 55 | \item |
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| 56 | \item |
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| 57 | \end{itemize} |
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| 58 | |
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| 59 | \subsection{Management of Intellectual Property} |
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| 60 | |
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| 61 | A global consortium agreement will be defined during the first six monts of the project. |
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| 62 | As already stated, the Coach project has been prepared during one tear by a monthly meeting |
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| 63 | involving the five academic partners. The general free software policy described in the |
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| 64 | previous section has been agreed by academic partners and has been |
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| 65 | approved by all industrial participants. This free software policy will |
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| 66 | simplify the definition of the consortium agreement. |
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| 67 | |
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