Prophid: a platform-based design method

The continuing trend towards higher integration densities of integrated circuits makes the development of systems-on-a-chip possible. For well-defined application domains 'silicon platforms' must be defined which allow efficient, yet programmable implementations. These platforms are heterogeneous reconfigurable multiprocessor architectures supporting a variety of communication and computation models. As a consequence designers are facing a large architecture space with new possibilities for new architectures. To exploit these opportunities a better understanding of system level architectures is necessary. A first step in this direction is to learn from design exercises. Eventually this may lead towards a system level design method. In this paper a multiprocessor architecture template is presented that serves as a platform for high-throughput applications. Central to this architecture is a reconfigurable high-performance processor network that uses communication concepts based on the TST-networks known from the literature. We discuss the characteristics of the architecture template in detail. Furthermore, we will discuss the specification, modelling, and mapping of applications for this architecture. Finally, we analyse cost and performance figures using real implementation results.