Publications (34)
OSMOSIS: Enabling Multi-Tenancy in Datacenter SmartNICs
Mikhail Khalilov, Marcin Chrapek, Siyuan Shen +7
Multi-tenancy is essential for unleashing SmartNIC's potential in datacenters. Our systematic analysis in this work shows that existing on-path SmartNICs have resource multiplexing…
Implementing and Optimizing an Open-Source SD-card Host Controller for RISC-V SoCs
Axel Vanoni, Philippe Sauter, Paul Scheffler +4
Recent announcements have shown the viability of end-to-end open-source (OS) Linux-capable RISC-V systems on chip (SoCs). However, practical application and software development pl…
Towards Reliable Systems: A Scalable Approach to AXI4 Transaction Monitoring
Chaoqun Liang, Thomas Benz, Alessandro Ottaviano +3
In safety-critical SoC applications such as automotive and aerospace, reliable transaction monitoring is crucial for maintaining system integrity. This paper introduces a drop-in T…
Croc: Training the Next Generation Chip Designers on Domain-Specific End-to-End Open Source Silicon
Enrico Zelioli, Philippe Sauter, Thomas Benz +5
The demand for domain-specific systems-on-chip (SoCs) in artificial intelligence, robotics, and automotive systems is increasing the need for engineers with hands-on expertise on v…
Near-Memory Parallel Indexing and Coalescing: Enabling Highly Efficient Indirect Access for SpMV
Chi Zhang, Paul Scheffler, Thomas Benz +2
Sparse matrix vector multiplication (SpMV) is central to numerous data-intensive applications, but requires streaming indirect memory accesses that severely degrade both processing…
AXI-REALM: A Lightweight and Modular Interconnect Extension for Traffic Regulation and Monitoring of Heterogeneous Real-Time SoCs
Thomas Benz, Alessandro Ottaviano, Robert Balas +4
The increasing demand for heterogeneous functionality in the automotive industry and the evolution of chip manufacturing processes have led to the transition from federated to inte…
FlatAttention: Dataflow and Fabric Collectives Co-Optimization for Efficient Multi-Head Attention on Tile-Based Many-PE Accelerators
Chi Zhang, Luca Colagrande, Renzo Andri +6
Multi-Head Attention (MHA) is a critical computational kernel in transformer-based AI models. Emerging scalable tile-based accelerator architectures integrate increasing numbers of…
A High-performance, Energy-efficient Modular DMA Engine Architecture
Thomas Benz, Michael Rogenmoser, Paul Scheffler +5
Data transfers are essential in today's computing systems as latency and complex memory access patterns are increasingly challenging to manage. Direct memory access engines (DMAEs)…
Data-Driven Power Modeling and Monitoring via Hardware Performance Counter Tracking
Sergio Mazzola, Gabriele Ara, Thomas Benz +3
Energy-centric design is paramount in the current embedded computing era: use cases require increasingly high performance at an affordable power budget, often under real-time const…
A Direct Memory Access Controller (DMAC) for Irregular Data Transfers on RISC-V Linux Systems
Thomas Benz, Axel Vanoni, Michael Rogenmoser +1
With the ever-growing heterogeneity in computing systems, driven by modern machine learning applications, pressure is increasing on memory systems to handle arbitrary and more dema…
FlooNoC: A 645 Gbps/link 0.15 pJ/B/hop Open-Source NoC with Wide Physical Links and End-to-End AXI4 Parallel Multi-Stream Support
Tim Fischer, Michael Rogenmoser, Thomas Benz +2
The new generation of domain-specific AI accelerators is characterized by rapidly increasing demands for bulk data transfers, as opposed to small, latency-critical cache line trans…
Occamy: A 432-Core Dual-Chiplet Dual-HBM2E 768-DP-GFLOP/s RISC-V System for 8-to-64-bit Dense and Sparse Computing in 12nm FinFET
Paul Scheffler, Thomas Benz, Viviane Potocnik +12
ML and HPC applications increasingly combine dense and sparse memory access computations to maximize storage efficiency. However, existing CPUs and GPUs struggle to flexibly handle…
An Open-Source Platform for High-Performance Non-Coherent On-Chip Communication
Andreas Kurth, Wolfgang Rönninger, Thomas Benz +4
On-chip communication infrastructure is a central component of modern systems-on-chip (SoCs), and it continues to gain importance as the number of cores, the heterogeneity of compo…
Basilisk: Achieving Competitive Performance with Open EDA Tools on an Open-Source Linux-Capable RISC-V SoC
Phillippe Sauter, Thomas Benz, Paul Scheffler +4
We introduce Basilisk, an optimized application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) implementation and design flow building on the end-to-end open-source Iguana system-on-chip (SoC)…
Data-Driven Power Modeling and Monitoring via Hardware Performance Counters Tracking
Sergio Mazzola, Gabriele Ara, Thomas Benz +3
In the current high-performance and embedded computing era, full-stack energy-centric design is paramount. Use cases require increasingly high performance at an affordable power bu…
A Data-Driven Approach to Lightweight DVFS-Aware Counter-Based Power Modeling for Heterogeneous Platforms
Sergio Mazzola, Thomas Benz, Björn Forsberg +1
Computing systems have shifted towards highly parallel and heterogeneous architectures to tackle the challenges imposed by limited power budgets. These architectures must be suppor…
HyperCroc: End-to-End Open-Source RISC-V MCU with a Plug-In Interface for Domain-Specific Accelerators
Philippe Sauter, Thomas Benz, Paul Scheffler +1
Domain-Specific architectures with accelerators for machine learning and signal processing require efficient bulk data movement and high-bandwidth access to large datasets. Such ca…
Insights from Basilisk: Are Open-Source EDA Tools Ready for a Multi-Million-Gate, Linux-Booting RV64 SoC Design?
Philippe Sauter, Thomas Benz, Paul Scheffler +2
Designing complex, multi-million-gate application-specific integrated circuits requires robust and mature electronic design automation (EDA) tools. We describe our efforts in enhan…
PsPIN: A high-performance low-power architecture for flexible in-network compute
Salvatore Di Girolamo, Andreas Kurth, Alexandru Calotoiu +5
The capacity of offloading data and control tasks to the network is becoming increasingly important, especially if we consider the faster growth of network speed when compared to C…
ControlPULPlet: A Flexible Real-time Multi-core RISC-V Controller for 2.5D Systems-in-package
Alessandro Ottaviano, Robert Balas, Tim Fischer +3
The growing complexity of real-time control algorithms with increasing performance demands, along with the shift to 2.5D technology, drive the need for scalable controllers to mana…
Toward Open-Source Chiplets for HPC and AI: Occamy and Beyond
Paul Scheffler, Thomas Benz, Tim Fischer +3
We present a roadmap for open-source chiplet-based RISC-V systems targeting high-performance computing and artificial intelligence, aiming to close the performance gap to proprieta…
AXI-Pack: Near-Memory Bus Packing for Bandwidth-Efficient Irregular Workloads
Chi Zhang, Paul Scheffler, Thomas Benz +2
Data-intensive applications involving irregular memory streams are inefficiently handled by modern processors and memory systems highly optimized for regular, contiguous data. Rece…
A Reliable, Time-Predictable Heterogeneous SoC for AI-Enhanced Mixed-Criticality Edge Applications
Angelo Garofalo, Alessandro Ottaviano, Matteo Perotti +20
Next-generation mixed-criticality Systems-on-chip (SoCs) for robotics, automotive, and space must execute mixed-criticality AI-enhanced sensor processing and control workloads, ens…
Development of an Energy-Efficient and Real-Time Data Movement Strategy for Next-Generation Heterogeneous Mixed-Criticality Systems
Thomas Benz
Industrial domains such as automotive, robotics, and aerospace are rapidly evolving to satisfy the increasing demand for machine-learning-driven Autonomy, Connectivity, Electrifica…
AXI-REALM: Safe, Modular and Lightweight Traffic Monitoring and Regulation for Heterogeneous Mixed-Criticality Systems
Thomas Benz, Alessandro Ottaviano, Chaoqun Liang +6
The automotive industry is transitioning from federated, homogeneous, interconnected devices to integrated, heterogeneous, mixed-criticality systems (MCS). This leads to challenges…
Basilisk: A 34 mm2 End-to-End Open-Source 64-bit Linux-Capable RISC-V SoC in 130nm BiCMOS
Philippe Sauter, Thomas Benz, Paul Scheffler +3
End-to-end open-source electronic design automation (OSEDA) enables a collaborative approach to chip design conducive to supply chain diversification and zero-trust step-by-step de…
ArtistIC: An Open-Source Toolchain for Top-Metal IC Art and Ultra-High-Fidelity GDSII Renders
Thomas Benz, Paul Scheffler, Nils Wistoff +3
Open-source projects require outreach material to grow their community, secure funds, and strengthen their influence. Numbers, specifications, and facts alone are intangible to uni…
Basilisk: An End-to-End Open-Source Linux-Capable RISC-V SoC in 130nm CMOS
Paul Scheffler, Philippe Sauter, Thomas Benz +2
Open-source hardware (OSHW) is rapidly gaining traction in academia and industry. The availability of open RTL descriptions, EDA tools, and even PDKs enables a fully auditable supp…
Cheshire: A Lightweight, Linux-Capable RISC-V Host Platform for Domain-Specific Accelerator Plug-In
Alessandro Ottaviano, Thomas Benz, Paul Scheffler +1
Power and cost constraints in the internet-of-things (IoT) extreme-edge and TinyML domains, coupled with increasing performance requirements, motivate a trend toward heterogeneous…
SentryCore: A RISC-V Co-Processor System for Safe, Real-Time Control Applications
Michael Rogenmoser, Alessandro Ottaviano, Thomas Benz +4
In the last decade, we have witnessed exponential growth in the complexity of control systems for safety-critical applications (automotive, robots, industrial automation) and their…
A Gigabit, DMA-enhanced Open-Source Ethernet Controller for Mixed-Criticality Systems
Chaoqun Liang, Alessandro Ottaviano, Thomas Benz +4
The ongoing revolution in application domains targeting autonomous navigation, first and foremost automotive "zonalization", has increased the importance of certain off-chip commun…
PATRONoC: Parallel AXI Transport Reducing Overhead for Networks-on-Chip targeting Multi-Accelerator DNN Platforms at the Edge
Vikram Jain, Matheus Cavalcante, Nazareno Bruschi +6
Emerging deep neural network (DNN) applications require high-performance multi-core hardware acceleration with large data bursts. Classical network-on-chips (NoCs) use serial packe…
Occamy: A 432-Core 28.1 DP-GFLOP/s/W 83% FPU Utilization Dual-Chiplet, Dual-HBM2E RISC-V-based Accelerator for Stencil and Sparse Linear Algebra Computations with 8-to-64-bit Floating-Point Support in 12nm FinFET
Gianna Paulin, Paul Scheffler, Thomas Benz +11
We present Occamy, a 432-core RISC-V dual-chiplet 2.5D system for efficient sparse linear algebra and stencil computations on FP64 and narrow (32-, 16-, 8-bit) SIMD FP data. Occamy…
Croc: An End-to-End Open-Source Extensible RISC-V MCU Platform to Democratize Silicon
Phillippe Sauter, Thomas Benz, Paul Scheffler +6
Ensuring a continuous and growing influx of skilled chip designers and a smooth path from education to innovation are key goals for several national and international "Chips Acts".…