Skip to main content

LUP Student Papers

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

On-chip Instrument Access Through System Hierarchy

Gangaraju, Shashi Kiran LU (2021) EITM02 20202
Department of Electrical and Information Technology
Abstract (Swedish)
There are many advantages with the development towards Integrated Circuits
(ICs) with smaller, faster, and more transistors. However, tighter margins lead to
a need of on-chip instruments to test, tune, and configure. These on-chip instruments,
which can be in the range of thousands per IC, must be accessed through
the life-time. However, access is challenged by complex system hierarchies. When
ICs are mounted on Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) there might not be a direct
access path and a single access protocol. In this thesis we have developed a generic
module to handle communication between two ICs. We propose two alternatives
for the communication. A hardware-based where communication is handled in an
interrupt-driven manner and... (More)
There are many advantages with the development towards Integrated Circuits
(ICs) with smaller, faster, and more transistors. However, tighter margins lead to
a need of on-chip instruments to test, tune, and configure. These on-chip instruments,
which can be in the range of thousands per IC, must be accessed through
the life-time. However, access is challenged by complex system hierarchies. When
ICs are mounted on Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) there might not be a direct
access path and a single access protocol. In this thesis we have developed a generic
module to handle communication between two ICs. We propose two alternatives
for the communication. A hardware-based where communication is handled in an
interrupt-driven manner and a software-based where the communication is handled
through polling. We have made experiments using a Xilinx Field-Programmable
Gate Array (FPGA) where we compare the solutions in terms of data overhead
and area cost. We implemented two ICs on the FPGA where we for one IC
used on-chip instruments connected using IEEE Std. 1687 and for the second IC
we implemented our module connected using IEEE Std. 1687. The communication
between the ICs was performed with Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) and
the communication with the outside world with Universal Asynchronous Receiver
Transmitter (UART). The experiments show that the hardware-based solution
provides little data and limited area overhead. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Gangaraju, Shashi Kiran LU
supervisor
organization
course
EITM02 20202
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
report number
LU/LTH-EIT 2021-801
language
English
id
9067487
date added to LUP
2021-11-01 11:30:36
date last changed
2021-11-01 11:30:36
@misc{9067487,
  abstract     = {{There are many advantages with the development towards Integrated Circuits
(ICs) with smaller, faster, and more transistors. However, tighter margins lead to
a need of on-chip instruments to test, tune, and configure. These on-chip instruments,
which can be in the range of thousands per IC, must be accessed through
the life-time. However, access is challenged by complex system hierarchies. When
ICs are mounted on Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) there might not be a direct
access path and a single access protocol. In this thesis we have developed a generic
module to handle communication between two ICs. We propose two alternatives
for the communication. A hardware-based where communication is handled in an
interrupt-driven manner and a software-based where the communication is handled
through polling. We have made experiments using a Xilinx Field-Programmable
Gate Array (FPGA) where we compare the solutions in terms of data overhead
and area cost. We implemented two ICs on the FPGA where we for one IC
used on-chip instruments connected using IEEE Std. 1687 and for the second IC
we implemented our module connected using IEEE Std. 1687. The communication
between the ICs was performed with Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) and
the communication with the outside world with Universal Asynchronous Receiver
Transmitter (UART). The experiments show that the hardware-based solution
provides little data and limited area overhead.}},
  author       = {{Gangaraju, Shashi Kiran}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{On-chip Instrument Access Through System Hierarchy}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}