Semi-Automatic Control Unit Generation for Complex VLSI Designs

Abstract

This paper presents a semi-automated way to generate control units for complex VLSI hardware designs based on a massive parallel micro-controller. This micro-controller can execute as many instructions in parallel as needed by the hardware design as well as having an unlimited number of input and output ports. Two versions of this control unit are presented in this paper. A generic one, which is generated from a set of parameters given by the designer and an optimized version which parses the control program that will run on the control unit in order to generate an optimized micro-controller. Results show that up to a 60% in area savings can be achieved using the optimized controller unit instead of the generic one. The presented controller was validated using a previously developed SoC design with a FSM based control unit showing that the functionality can be completely replicated at the expense of incurring in a 7.2% and 15.4% area overhead respectively.