X-HEEP: An Open-Source, Configurable and Extendible RISC-V Microcontroller for the Exploration of Ultra-Low-Power Edge Accelerators

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Main Authors: Machetti, Simone, Schiavone, Pasquale Davide, Müller, Thomas Christoph, Peón-Quirós, Miguel, Atienza, David
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Machetti, Simone
Schiavone, Pasquale Davide
Müller, Thomas Christoph
Peón-Quirós, Miguel
Atienza, David
author_facet Machetti, Simone
Schiavone, Pasquale Davide
Müller, Thomas Christoph
Peón-Quirós, Miguel
Atienza, David
contents The field of edge computing has witnessed remarkable growth owing to the increasing demand for real-time processing of data in applications. However, challenges persist due to limitations in performance and power consumption. To overcome these challenges, heterogeneous architectures have emerged that combine host processors with specialized accelerators tailored to specific applications, leading to improved performance and reduced power consumption. However, most of the existing platforms lack the necessary configurability and extendability options for integrating custom accelerators. To overcome these limitations, we introduce in this paper the eXtendible Heterogeneous Energy-Efficient Platform (X-HEEP). X-HEEP is an open-source platform designed to natively support the integration of ultra-low-power edge accelerators. It provides customization options to match specific application requirements by exploring various core types, bus topologies, addressing modes, memory sizes, and peripherals. Moreover, the platform prioritizes energy efficiency by implementing low-power strategies, such as clock-gating and power-gating. We demonstrate the real-world applicability of X-HEEP by providing an integration example tailored for healthcare applications that includes a coarse-grained reconfigurable array (CGRA) and in-memory computing (IMC) accelerators. The resulting design, called HEEPocrates, has been implemented both in field programmable gate array (FPGA) on the Xilinx Zynq-7020 chip and in silicon with TSMC 65nm low-power CMOS technology. We run a set of healthcare applications and measure their energy consumption to demonstrate the alignment of our chip with other state-of-the-art microcontrollers commonly adopted in this domain. Moreover, we present the energy benefits of 4.9x and 4.8x gained by exploiting the integrated CGRA and IMC accelerators compared to running on the host CPU.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_05548
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle X-HEEP: An Open-Source, Configurable and Extendible RISC-V Microcontroller for the Exploration of Ultra-Low-Power Edge Accelerators
Machetti, Simone
Schiavone, Pasquale Davide
Müller, Thomas Christoph
Peón-Quirós, Miguel
Atienza, David
Hardware Architecture
The field of edge computing has witnessed remarkable growth owing to the increasing demand for real-time processing of data in applications. However, challenges persist due to limitations in performance and power consumption. To overcome these challenges, heterogeneous architectures have emerged that combine host processors with specialized accelerators tailored to specific applications, leading to improved performance and reduced power consumption. However, most of the existing platforms lack the necessary configurability and extendability options for integrating custom accelerators. To overcome these limitations, we introduce in this paper the eXtendible Heterogeneous Energy-Efficient Platform (X-HEEP). X-HEEP is an open-source platform designed to natively support the integration of ultra-low-power edge accelerators. It provides customization options to match specific application requirements by exploring various core types, bus topologies, addressing modes, memory sizes, and peripherals. Moreover, the platform prioritizes energy efficiency by implementing low-power strategies, such as clock-gating and power-gating. We demonstrate the real-world applicability of X-HEEP by providing an integration example tailored for healthcare applications that includes a coarse-grained reconfigurable array (CGRA) and in-memory computing (IMC) accelerators. The resulting design, called HEEPocrates, has been implemented both in field programmable gate array (FPGA) on the Xilinx Zynq-7020 chip and in silicon with TSMC 65nm low-power CMOS technology. We run a set of healthcare applications and measure their energy consumption to demonstrate the alignment of our chip with other state-of-the-art microcontrollers commonly adopted in this domain. Moreover, we present the energy benefits of 4.9x and 4.8x gained by exploiting the integrated CGRA and IMC accelerators compared to running on the host CPU.
title X-HEEP: An Open-Source, Configurable and Extendible RISC-V Microcontroller for the Exploration of Ultra-Low-Power Edge Accelerators
topic Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05548