The integration of the DMA350 into the nanosoc re-usable SoC architecture will improve the transfer bandwidth on DMA channels within the SoC.  This project integrates the DMA 350 into nanosoc, validates the integration and functionality of the DMA 350, and compares the performance of the DMA 350 to the PL230, that was the initial DMA controller integrated into nanosoc.

Performing system-level verification on a System-on-Chip (SoC) design is crucial for ensuring the correct function and overall performance of the entire system, rather than individual components. With NanoSoC, there are multiple options for performing system-level verification.

Motivation

At SoC Labs, we have need of an accelerator to test our SoC infrastructure and confirmation of our accelerator wrapper design to get size and performance information as well as to try and get ahead and uncover potential problems researchers may experience trying to put their IP into the reference SoC.

Specification

The preliminary design has been broken into two main blocks:

Fused is a full-system simulator for modelling energy-driven computers. To accurately model the interplay between energy-availability, power consumption, and execution; Fused models energy and execution in a closed feedback loop.

This project developed a 2-tier 3D-stacked Cortex-M0 SoC, in 65nm CMOS technology, with wireless inter-tier power and data transfer through an inductively coupled bus which achieved 20.3Gbps/mm2 data, and 7.1mW/mm2 power transfer simultaneously through a 250 µm channel. At the time of publishing it was the smallest ever reported inductive data and power link.