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Automatic synthesis of application-specific processors

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dc.contributor.advisor Aghdasi, F.
dc.contributor.advisor Kinyua, J.
dc.contributor.advisor Central University of Technology, Free State. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology. School of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering
dc.contributor.author Mutigwe, Charles
dc.date.accessioned 2014-10-18T16:23:54Z
dc.date.available 2014-10-18T16:23:54Z
dc.date.issued 2012
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/11462/163
dc.description Thesis (D. Tech. (Engineering: Electrical)) -- Central University of technology, Free State, 2012 en_US
dc.description.abstract This thesis describes a method for the automatic generation of appli- cation speci_c processors. The thesis was organized into three sepa- rate but interrelated studies, which together provide: a justi_cation for the method used, a theory that supports the method, and a soft- ware application that realizes the method. The _rst study looked at how modern day microprocessors utilize their hardware resources and it proposed a metric, called core density, for measuring the utilization rate. The core density is a function of the microprocessor's instruction set and the application scheduled to run on that microprocessor. This study concluded that modern day microprocessors use their resources very ine_ciently and proposed the use of subset processors to exe- cute the same applications more e_ciently. The second study sought to provide a theoretical framework for the use of subset processors by developing a generic formal model of computer architecture. To demonstrate the model's versatility, it was used to describe a number of computer architecture components and entire computing systems. The third study describes the development of a set of software tools that enable the automatic generation of application speci_c proces- sors. The FiT toolkit automatically generates a unique Hardware Description Language (HDL) description of a processor based on an application binary _le and a parameterizable template of a generic mi- croprocessor. Area-optimized and performance-optimized custom soft processors were generated using the FiT toolkit and the utilization of the hardware resources by the custom soft processors was character- ized. The FiT toolkit was combined with an ANSI C compiler and a third-party tool for programming _eld-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to create an unconstrained C-to-silicon compiler. en_US
dc.format.extent 4 801 938 bytes
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.language.iso en_US en_US
dc.publisher Bloemfontein : Central University of Technology, Free State
dc.subject Central University of Technology, Free State - Dissertations en_US
dc.subject Application-specific integrated circuits - Design and construction en_US
dc.subject Compilers (Computer programmes) en_US
dc.subject Microprocessors - Design and construction en_US
dc.subject Field programmable gate arrays en_US
dc.subject Computer architecture en_US
dc.subject Application software - Automatic control en_US
dc.subject Dissertations, Academic - South Africa - Bloemfontein en_US
dc.title Automatic synthesis of application-specific processors en_US
dc.type Thesis en_US
dc.rights.holder Central University of Technology, Free State


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