OpenPiton: An open source manycore research framework

Jonathan Balkind, Michael McKeown, Yaosheng Fu, Tri Nguyen, Yanqi Zhou, Alexey Lavrov, Mohammad Shahrad, Adi Fuchs, Samuel Payne, Xiaohua Liang, Matthew Matl, David Wentzlaff

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

68 Scopus citations

Abstract

Industry is building larger, more complex, manycore processors on the back of strong institutional knowledge, but academic projects face difficulties in replicating that scale. To alleviate these difficulties and to develop and share knowledge, the community needs open architecture frameworks for simulation, synthesis, and software exploration which support extensibility, scalability, and configurability, alongside an established base of verification tools and supported software. In this paper we present OpenPiton, an open source framework for building scalable architecture research prototypes from 1 core to 500 million cores. OpenPiton is the world's first open source, general-purpose, multithreaded manycore processor and framework. OpenPiton leverages the industry hardened OpenSPARC T1 core with modifications and builds upon it with a scratch-built, scalable uncore creating a flexible, modern manycore design. In addition, OpenPiton provides synthesis and backend scripts for ASIC and FPGA to enable other researchers to bring their designs to implementation. OpenPiton provides a complete verification infrastructure of over 8000 tests, is supported by mature software tools, runs full-stack multiuser Debian Linux, and is written in industry standard Verilog. Multiple implementations of OpenPiton have been created including a taped-out 25-core implementation in IBM's 32nm process and multiple Xilinx FPGA prototypes.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationASPLOS 2016 - 21st International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages217-232
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9781450340915
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 25 2016
Event21st International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, ASPLOS 2016 - Atlanta, United States
Duration: Apr 2 2016Apr 6 2016

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems - ASPLOS
Volume02-06-April-2016

Other

Other21st International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, ASPLOS 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAtlanta
Period4/2/164/6/16

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Information Systems
  • Hardware and Architecture

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