392255 Projekt "Hardware-based Data Transmission in an Embedded Multiprocessor" (Pj) (SoSe 2014)

Energy efficient Multicore-Processors are used in mobile and embedded devices to enhance computational power. The CoreVA CPU was developed by Cognitronics and Sensor Systems Group and is aiming for high resource efficiency. A LLVM-based tool-chain is used to program the CoreVA. At the moment, CoreVA-based multiprocessors with dozens or hundreds of CPU cores are developed. Efficient communication between CPUs is a critical factor with respect to area requirement, power consumption and performance. Direct memory access (DMA) controllers are used to transfer data between memories independently of the CPUs. This frees the CPU from time consuming memory transfers. The CPU configures the DMA controller and receives a message when the transfer has finished. Goal of this student's project is the implementation of a DMA controller in VHDL. In addition, a simple low level API has to be developed so programmers can easily unitize the DMA controller in their software. VHDL skills are helpful but not necessary for this project. The project could be a good way to learn how to describe hardware with VHDL. The project documentation can be written in English or German.