Speedcore Embedded FPGA IP

Achronix's Speedcore eFPGA IP allows companies to embed a programmable logic fabric in their ASICs, delivering to end users the capability to modify or upgrade the functionality of an ASIC after being deployed in the field. This flexibility dramatically expands the solution space that can be served by the ASIC as it can be updated to support changing standards and algorithms. Timing closure is particularly challenging due to the fact that the eFPGA fabric may host any number of designs over the course of device operation. Each of those designs must work independently with the rest of the ASIC, and timing closure can only be said to have been met if all of the possible designs targeting the eFPGA fabric can meet timing.

Speedcore IP is embedded FPGA (eFPGA) that can be integrated into an ASIC or SoC. Customers specify their logic, RAM and DSP resource needs, then Achronix configures the Speedcore IP to meet their individual requirements.

Intelligent server adapters, or SmartNICs, boost server performance in cloud and private data centers by offloading network processing workloads and tasks from server CPUs. Offloading network processing to a SmartNIC is not a new concept — for example, there are NICs that offload some network-processing functions such as checksum computation and segmentation. However, the rapid explosion in data-center network traffic driven by software-defined networking (SDN), Open vSwitch (OVS), and network functions virtualization (NFV) demands a new class of NIC with even greater offload capabilities: the SmartNIC.

New cryptocurrencies such as Monero introduce ASIC-resistance and memory-hardness to prevent ASICs from being built that give some operators a competitive mining advantage over others who do not have access to the same technology. This white paper discusses the relevant background and presents a solution based on Achronix Speedcore™ embedded FPGAs (eFPGAs), enabling users to regain a highly profitable advantage over competing solutions.

In the advanced, fully autonomous, self-driving vehicles of the future, the existence of dozens and even hundreds of distributed CPUs and numerous other processing elements is assured. Peripheral sensor-fusion and other processing tasks can be served by ASICs, SoCs, or traditional FPGAs. But the introduction of embedded FPGA blocks such as Achronix's Speedcore eFPGA IP provides numerous system-design advantages in terms of shorter latency, more security, greater bandwidth, and better reliability that are simply not possible when using CPUs, GPUs, or even standalone FPGAs.

Achronix Speedcore™ eFPGA IP can be integrated in an SoC for high-performance, compute-intensive and realtime processing applications such as AI, automotive sensor fusion, network acceleration and wireless 5G. Speedcore eFPGA IP is a game-changer for SoC developers, allowing them to add flexibility to their products by including FPGA technology in their ASICs. For SoC development, companies specify the quantity and mix of lookup-table (LUT) logic, embedded memory blocks, and DSP blocks that best meets their needs. Along with these functions, Achronix now offers the ability for companies to define custom block functions, optimized for their application, that can also be included in the eFPGA fabric. Speedcore custom blocks increase die area efficiency, increase performance and lower power.

AI requires a careful balance of datapath performance, memory latency, and throughput that requires an approach based on pulling as much of the functionality as possible into an ASIC or SoC. But that single-chip device needs plasticity to be able to handle the changes in structure that are inevitable in machine-learning projects. Adding eFPGA technology provides the mixture of flexibility and support for custom logic that the market requires. Achronix provides not only the building blocks required for an AI-ready eFPGA solution, but also delivers a framework that supports design through to debug and test of the final application. Only Achronix Speedcore IP has the right mix of features for advanced AI that will support a new generation of real-time, self-learning systems.

Phase zero is the beginning of a Speedcore design and how you begin matters. From a technical perspective, you will want to explore the possibilities to maximize the benefit of having your ASIC deployed with a Speedcore instance with a mix of resources well suited to your current and future programmed configurations. Achronix will help you along this road, providing support, training and feedback in employing tools, benchmarking designs and dealing with optimization issues.

The Speedcore design and integration methodology has been defined with intimate awareness of the difficulties ASIC engineering teams must contend with. All the necessary files and flows for capturing the functional, timing and power characteristics of a user-defined and programmed Speedcore instance, along with support for successfully reconfiguring an already field-deployed Speedcore IP embedded in an ASIC, are available to an ASIC development team either as products of the ACE design tools or as deliverables provided by Achronix. This methodology has already been proven in silicon and readily accommodates variations and preferences in company-specific ASIC development methodologies.

The current public debate on the future of the semiconductor industry has turned to discussions about a growing selection of technologies that focuses instead on new system architectures and better use of available silicon through new concepts in circuit, device, and packaging design. The emergence of embedded FPGA is, in fact, not only essential at this juncture of the microelectronics history, but also inevitable. To understand this, a review of the history of FPGA technology is in order.