ECE 506 Reconfigurable Computing Lecture 5 Logic Block Architecture Ali Akoglu
FPGA Design, Symmetrical Architecture Approach
Architectural Issues – Ahmed and Rose What values of N, I, and K minimize the following parameters? -Area -Delay -Area-delay product
Architectural Issues – Ahmed and Rose °What is a high stress routing? °What are the potential problems with measuring critical path delay under high stress routing? °How are these issues avoided? Routing using minimum number of tracks needed for the circuit This leads to increased routing execution time Inconsistent results in delay Solution: relax CW by 30%
Design Flow
Background Check °What is the role of a buffer? isolate other gates or circuits from each other drive high current loads high "fan-out" capability -for power amplification of a digital signal output of a logic gate usually connected to the inputs of other gates. each input requires a certain amount of current from the gate output to change state, each additional gate connection adds to the load of the gate.
Architectural Issues – Ahmed and Rose Fcin fixed! # of muxes to feed into increases with N
Fully Connected Clusters Require fewer than full KxN inputs to achieve high logic utilization: -input sharing, -output-input sharing, -some LUTs not requiring all inputs to be used, -I=K/2*(N+1) (50%-60% is good enough for 98%, hence /2) Reducing inputs reduces the size of the device and makes it faster.
Before Placement: Clustering °Academic studies typically consider fully populated (connected) logic cluster: Simpler to write CAD tools
Before Placement: Clustering °Commercial parts: depopulated °(this is 50%)
Effect of N and K on Area °Reduction in total area as cluster size is increased from 1 to 3 for all LUT sizes. °As clusters are made larger (N>4), there is little impact on total FPGA area.
Effect of N and K on Area °intercluster area more external connections localized, reducing area number of inputs/outputs increase per CLB, this increases the track count leading to increase in intercluster area °intracluster area more MUXes are used in the CLB, increasing area As N increases
Intracluster area with respect to K faster pace in increase in logic area than decrease in number of CLBs.
Intercluster area with respect to K As K increases, number of clusters decreases faster than the rate of increase in external routing area.
Delay vs K and N rate of change in BLE, CLB and inter-cluster delays, rate of change in the number of BLEs and CLBs on critical path
Effect of N and K on Area-delay product K = 4-6, N= 4-10 looks OK