Changeset 97 for anr/section-2.1.tex

Timestamp:

Feb 5, 2010, 10:16:22 PM (14 years ago)

Author:

alain

Message:

Alain : refonte de la section 2

File:

• anr/section-2.1.tex (modified) (3 diffs)

anr/section-2.1.tex

@@ -1 @@
-Microelectronic allows the integration of complicated functions into products, increases
+Microelectronic components allow the integration of complicated functions into products, increases
 commercial attractivity of these products and improves their competitivity.
-Multimedia and communication sectors have taken advantage from microelectronics facilities
-thanks to the developpment of design methodologies and tools for real time embedded
-systems.
-Many other sectors could benefit from microelectronics if these methologies and tools were
-adapted to their features. The Non Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs involded in designing
-and manufacturing an ASIC is very high.
+Multimedia and tele-communication sectors have taken advantage from microelectronics facilities
+thanks to the developpment of design methodologies and tools for embedded systems.
+\par
+Unfortunately, the Non Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs involded in designing
+and manufacturing ASICs is very high.
 An IC foundry costs several billions of euros and the fabrication of a specific circuit
 costs several millions. For example a conservative estimate for a 65nm ASIC project is 10
 million USD.
-Consequently, it is generally unfeasible to design and fabricate ASICs in
-low volumes and ICs are designed to cover a broad applications spectrum at the cost of
-some performance degradation.
-\\
+Consequently, it is generally unfeasible to design and fabricate ASICs for low and medium
+volume markets.
+\par
 Today, FPGAs become important actors in the computational domain that was originally dominated
 by microprocessors and ASICs. Just like microprocessors, FPGA based systems can be reprogrammed
-on a per-application basis. At the same time, for many applications, FPGAs offer significant performance benefits over
-microprocessors implementation. Although these benefits are still
-generally an order of magnitude less than in equivalent ASIC implementations, low costs 
+on a per-application basis. For many applications, FPGAs offer significant performance benefits over
+microprocessors implementation. There is still a performance degradation of one order
+of magnitude versus an equivalent ASIC implementations, but low cost 
 (500 euros to 10K euros), fast time to market and flexibility of FPGAs make them an attractive 
 choice for low-to-medium volume applications. 
@@ -27 +25 @@
 complex systems like multi-processors platform with application dedicated coprocessors. 
 Table~\ref{fpga_market} shows the estimation of FPGA worldwide market in the next years in
-various application domains. The ``high end'' lines concern only FPGA with high logic capacity for complex system implementations. 
+various application domains. 
 This market is in significant expansion and is estimated to 914\,M\$ in 2012.
-Using FPGA limits the NRE costs to the design cost. This boosts the developpment of of automatic design tools and methodologies.
 
 \begin{table}\leavevmode\center
@@ -50 +47 @@
 \end{table}
 \par
-Today, several companies (atipa, blue-arc, Bull, Chelsio, Convey, CRAY, DataDirect, DELL, hp, 
-Wild Systems, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Myricom, NEC, nvidia etc) are making systems where demand 
-for very high performance (HPC) primes over other requirements. They tend to use the highest 
-performing devices like Multi-core CPUs, GPUs, large FPGAs, custom ICs and the most innovative 
-architectures and algorithms. These companies show up in different "traditional" applications and market 
-segments like computing clusters (ad-hoc), servers and storage, networking and Telecom, ASIC 
-emulation and prototyping, military/aereo etc. The HPC market size is estimated today by FPGA providers 
-at 214\,M\$. 
-This market is dominated by Multi-core CPUs and GPUs based solutions and the expansion 
-of FPGA-based solutions is limited by the lack of design flow automation. Nowadays, there are neither commercial 
-nor academic  tools covering the whole design process.
-For instance, with SOPC Builder from Altera, users can select and parameterize IP components 
-from an extensive drop-down list of communication, digital signal processor (DSP), microprocessor 
-and bus interface cores, as well as incorporate their own IP. Designers can then generate 
-a synthesized netlist, simulation test bench and custom software library that reflect the hardware 
-configuration.
-Nevertheless, SOPC Builder does not provide any facilities to synthesize coprocessors\emph{I
-(Steven) disagree : the C2H compiler bundled with SOPCBuilder does a pretty good job at this} and to
-simulate the platform at a high design level (systemC). 
-In addition, SOPC Builder is proprietary and only works together with Altera's Quartus compilation
-tool to implement designs on Altera devices (Stratix, Arria, Cyclone).
-PICO [CITATION] and CATAPULT [CITATION] allow to synthesize coprocessors from a C++ description.
-Nevertheless, they can only deal with data dominated applications and they do not handle the platform level.
-The Xilinx System Generator for DSP [http://www.xilinx.com/tools/sysgen.htm] is a plug-in to 
-Simulink that enables designers to develop high-performance DSP systems for Xilinx FPGAs. 
-Designers can design and simulate a system using MATLAB and Simulink. The tool will then 
-automatically generate synthesizable Hardware Description Language (HDL) code mapped to Xilinx 
-pre-optimized algorithms. 
-However, this tool targets only DSP based algorithms.
-\\
-Consequently, designers developping an embedded system needs to master for example
-SoCLib for design exploration,
-SOPC Builder at the platform level, 
-PICO for synthesizing the data dominated coprocessors
-and Quartus for design implementation.
-This requires an important tools interfacing effort and makes the design process very complex 
-and achievable only by designers skilled in many domains.
-The aim of the COACH project is to integrate all these tools in the same framework and to allow \textbf{pure software} developpers to realize embedded systems.
+
+This market is dominated by Multi-core CPUs and GPUs based solutions and the expansion of FPGA-based solutions 
+is limited by the lack of design flow automation. Nowadays, there are neither commercial 
+nor academic  tools covering the whole design process from the system level specification to the bit stream
+generation.
+%For instance, with SOPC Builder from Altera, users can select and parameterize IP components 
+%from an extensive drop-down list of communication, digital signal processor (DSP), microprocessor 
+%and bus interface cores, as well as incorporate their own IP. Designers can then generate 
+%a synthesized netlist, simulation test bench and custom software library that reflect the hardware 
+%configuration.
+%Nevertheless, SOPC Builder does not provide any facilities to synthesize coprocessors\emph{I
+(%Steven) disagree : the C2H compiler bundled with SOPCBuilder does a pretty good job at this} and to
+%simulate the platform at a high design level (systemC). 
+%In addition, SOPC Builder is proprietary and only works together with Altera's Quartus compilation
+%tool to implement designs on Altera devices (Stratix, Arria, Cyclone).
+%PICO [CITATION] and CATAPULT [CITATION] allow to synthesize coprocessors from a C++ description.
+%Nevertheless, they can only deal with data dominated applications and they do not handle the platform level.
+%The Xilinx System Generator for DSP [http://www.xilinx.com/tools/sysgen.htm] is a plug-in to 
+%Simulink that enables designers to develop high-performance DSP systems for Xilinx FPGAs. 
+%Designers can design and simulate a system using MATLAB and Simulink. The tool will then 
+%automatically generate synthesizable Hardware Description Language (HDL) code mapped to Xilinx 
+%pre-optimized algorithms. 
+%However, this tool targets only DSP based algorithms.
+
+Consequently, a designer developping an embedded system needs to master
+four different design environment : a virtual prototyping environment such as SoCLib for system level exploration,
+an architecture compiler (such as SOPC Builder from Altera, or System generator from Xilinx) to define the
+hardware architecture, one or several HLS tools (such as PICO [CITATION] ou CATAPULT [CITATION]) for 
+coprocessor synthesis, and finally a backend synthesis tool (such as Quartus or YYYY) for the bit-stream generation.
+
+The aim of the COACH project is to integrate all these design steps into a single design framework.
+and to allow \textbf{pure software} developpers to develop embedded systems.
 \par
-The combination of the framework dedicated to software developpers and FPGA target, allows to gain 
-market share over Multi-core CPUs and GPUs HPC based solutions. 
-Moreover, one can expect that small and even very small companies will be able to propose embedded 
-system and accelerating solutions for standard software applications with acceptable prices, thanks 
- to the elimination of huge hardware investment in opposite to ASIC based solution.
-\\
-This new market may explode in the same way as the micro-computer market in the eighties. This success was due 
-to the low cost of the first micro-processors (compared to main frames) and the advent of high level 
-programming languages which allowed a high number of programmers to launch start-ups in software
-engineering.
+We believe that the combination of a design environment dedicated to software developpers and the FPGA target, 
+allows small and even very small companies to propose embedded system and accelerating solutions 
+for standard software applications with acceptable prices.
 
+This new market may explode in the same way as the micro-computer market in the eighties,
+whose success was due to the low cost of the first micro-processors (compared to main frames) 
+and the advent of high level programming languages which allowed a high number of programmers 
+to launch start-ups in software engineering.
+