학술논문

A Mixed-Signal RISC-V Signal Analysis SoC Generator With a 16-nm FinFET Instance
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of. 54(10):2786-2801 Oct, 2019
Subject
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Computing and Processing
Generators
Hardware
Hardware design languages
Signal analysis
Tools
FinFETs
Agile hardware design
analog-to-digital converter (ADC)
CMOS
fast Fourier transform
filter
FinFET
generators
radar signal processing
spectrometer
Language
ISSN
0018-9200
1558-173X
Abstract
This paper demonstrates a signal analysis system-on-chip (SoC) consisting of a general-purpose RISC-V core with vector extensions and a fixed-function signal-processing accelerator. Both the application core and the accelerators are design instances produced through an agile design-space exploration process by generators that allow for a wide range of parameter configurations. The signal processing chain consists of generated instances of a time-interleaved analog-to-digital converter (ADC) followed by a digital tuner, a finite-impulse response (FIR) filter, a polyphase filter, and a fast Fourier transform (FFT) all connected to the five-stage, in-order RISC-V Rocket processor via an AXI4 bus. The generator-based design methodology is detailed, along with the agile design process of producing the fabricated design instance. The $5\,\,\text {mm}\times 5\,\,\text {mm}$ chip is implemented in a 16-nm FinFET process and operates at 410 MHz at 750 mV drawing 600 mW. Presented applications show coupled functionality of the application processor and accelerator performing spectrometry and radar receive processing, and a comparison with other state-of-the-art application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) proves that generators can produce performance-competitive designs.