Add Terminology man page

.TH tapasco-concepts 7 "May 11, 2017" "version 2017.1" "MISC"

.SH TAPASCO CONCEPTS / TERMINOLOGY

.TP

.B Compositions

.RS

TaPaSCo generates on-chip microarchitectures for

.I Compositions

consisting of a number of

.I Processing Elements (PEs).

It organizes the PEs according to an

.I Architecture

template, instantiates a

.I Platform

template to provide access to/from the host, memory and a signaling interface

(e.g., interrupts) and performs automatic wiring and pin constraining to

generate a full-system design. All designs generated by TaPaSCo can be

programmed using the

.I Tapasco API

(see tapasco-api.h(3)), i.e., the same software can be run on multiple FPGA

platforms.

.RE

.B TaPaSCo microarchitectures

.RS

The microarchitectures generated by TaPaSCo consist of two parts: The

.I Architecture

and the

.I Platform:

Architecture is resonsible for the organization and wiring of the processing

elements, as well as their control interface. Platform is responsible for

the rest of the design, e.g., the communication to the host, access to

memory, peripherals.

.RE

.B Platform

.RS

Hardware Platform template; each target board (usually) requires its own

Platform template. The Platform defines

.RS 2

.B * the exact part identifier of the FPGA

(e.g., xc7z020clg484-1),

.br

.B * the connection to the host

(e.g., PCIe bridge, AXI master),

.br

.B * the device memory/-ies

(e.g., MIG controller, shared main memory) and

.br

.B * all available optional peripherals (LEDs, sensors, ...)

.RE

.PP

The template is implemented by its main Tcl script (for example, see

$TAPASCO_HOME/platforms/zynq/zynq.tcl). To implement a new Platform, simply

start from an existing one; the \'zc706\' and \'zedboard\' Platforms may be a

good starting point, because they show the minimal interface that is required

(they "inherit" most of their functionality from a common Zynq Tcl).

Hardware generated by the Platform is controlled via the

.I loadable kernel module (LKM)

(or, in general: the device driver) of the Platform and the user space library

above that in libplatform(3).

.RE

.TP

.B Architecture

.RS

Hardware template for the PE organization. The Architecture defines

.RS 2

.B * the control register interface layout

(i.e., PE-local address maps and protocol),

.br

.B * the memory access interface(s) for PEs

(e.g., AXI4-MM masters for memory accesses from PEs),

.br

.B * the signaling interface(s) for PEs

(e.g., level-sensitive interrupt lines),

.B * the automatic wiring and

.br

.B * the interfaces toward the

.I Platform

.RE

.PP

The main Tcl script of the Architecture generates a pre-wired cell called the

\'thread pool\' in which all PEs are instantiated and all their interfaces are

wired to macro-cell inputs/outputs.

.PP

Example: The \'baseline\' Architecture uses AXI4Lite interfaces for the control

registers of the PEs, AXI4-MM master interfaces for memory accesses of the PEs

and single wire, level-sensitive interrupt lines for signaling. The PEs are

connected using AXI Interconnect hierarchies.

.RE

.TP

.B Composition

.RS

Main input to TaPaSCo, a sequence of PEs with their instantiation counts.

TaPaSCo will automatically construct a full-system design from this input.

.RE

.TP

.B Processing Element (PE)

.RS

A hardware IP core that performs a specific computational function. These

are the building blocks of your design in TPC. Each PE is an 

.I instance

of a 

.I Core.

.RE

.TP

.B Core

.RS

A custom IP core described by an IP-XACT [2] description. This is the

file format the Xilinx Vivado IP Integrator uses in its IP Catalog. It usually 

consists of a single .zip file with a \'component.xml\' somewhere inside it,

which provides detailed description of all files, ports and modules of

the IP core. For TaPaSCo, a Core also contains a basic evaluation report,

i.e., an estimation of the area and the worst case data path delay / 

maximal frequency the core can run at, which is device-dependent; therefore

the same 

.I Kernel

may have many Cores, one for each 

.I Platform

and

.I Architecture

combination.

.RE

.TP

.B Target

.RS

Most activities in TaPaSCo require a Target:

A Target is a pair (

.I Architecture

,

.I Platform

).

.RE

.TP

.B Kernel

.RS

Abstract description of a 

.I Core.

More precisely, in TaPaSCo a Kernel is the description of a custom IP core that

can be built via

.I High-Level Synthesis (HLS).

The HLS step will generate a

.I Core

suitable for the selected

.I Target.

.RE

REFERENCES

.RS

[1] http://json.org

.br

[2] http://www.accellera.org/activities/working-groups/ip-xact

.br

[3] http://www.scala-lang.org

.RE