Handheld devices are expected to start using fine-grained ASIC accelerators to meet energy-efficiency requirements of increasingly complex applications, e.g., video decoding and reconfigurable radio. To avoid overhead, static multiprocessor schedules are preferable for orchestrating fine-grained accelerators. However, as modern applications use accelerators in irregular patterns, static scheduling leads to low hardware utilization. Run-time scheduling for fine-grained accelerators solves the utilization problem, but easily produces significant overhead. We propose an efficient Accelerator Management Unit (AMU), implemented in hardware. E.g., in video decoding, the AMU takes 3 to 18 cycles to compute a macroblock decoding schedule. The CPU may perform useful work, as the AMU does independent task dispatching. Two experiments are performed, where the AMU is integrated into an FPGA-based multiprocessing prototype system. One experiment does AMU-orchestrated MPEG-4 video decoding and the other demonstrates that the AMU enables low-overhead dynamic scheduling and produces a significant performance advantage over static scheduling. ©2009 IEEE.

We propose a new DSP block for use in modern high-performance FPGAs. Current DSP blocks contain fixed-bitwidth multipliers that can be combined efficiently to form larger multipliers. Our approach is similar, but includes a bypass layer following the partial product generator that exposes the compressor tree used for partial product reduction directly to the user. As a consequence, the proposed DSP block can accelerate multi-input addition operations in addition to multiplication. To increase the flexibility of the device, the partial product reduction tree used within our DSP block uses a fixed-function compression logic along with a field programmable compressor tree (FPCT), the latter of which is user-configurable to meet the needs of the application at hand. Multi-input addition operations can be mapped directly onto the FPCT without compromising any of the other functionality of the DSP block. © 2009 IEEE.

Power-based side channel attacks are a significant security risk, especially for embedded applications. To improve the security of such devices, protected logic styles have been proposed as an alternative to CMOS. However, they should only be used sparingly, since their area and power consumption are both significantly larger than for CMOS. We propose to augment a processor, realized in CMOS, with custom instruction set extensions, designed with security and performance as the primary objectives, that are realized in a protected logic. We have developed a design flow based on standard CAD tools that can automatically synthesize and place-and-route such hybrid designs. The flow is integrated into a simulation and evaluation environment to quantify the security achieved on a sound basis. Using MCML logic as a case study, we have explored different partitions of the PRESENT block cipher between protected and unprotected logic. This experiment illustrates the tradeoff between the type and amount of application-level functionality implemented in protected logic and the level of security achieved by the design. Our design approach and evaluation tools are generic and could be used to partition any algorithm using any protected logic style. © 2009 Springer.