CommunityNews

CommunityNews

Ramping Up Open-Source RISC-V Cores: Assessing the Energy Efficiency of Superscalar, Out-of-Order Execution

Open-source RISC-V cores are increasingly demanded in domains like automotive and space, where achieving high instructions per cycle (IPC) through superscalar and out-of-order (OoO) execution is crucial. However, high-performance open-source RISC-V cores face adoption challenges: some (e.g. BOOM, Xiangshan) are developed in Chisel with limited support from industrial electronic design automation (EDA) tools. Others, like the XuanTie C910 core, use proprietary interfaces and protocols, including non-standard AXI protocol extensions, interrupts, and debug support.
In this work, we present a modified version of the OoO C910 core to achieve full RISC-V standard compliance in its debug, interrupt, and memory interfaces. We also introduce CVA6S+, an enhanced version of the dual-issue, industry-supported open-source CVA6 core. CVA6S+ achieves 34.4% performance improvement over CVA6 core.
We conduct a detailed performance, area, power, and energy analysis on the superscalar out-of-order C910, superscalar in-order CVA6S+ and vanilla, single-issue in-order CVA6, all implemented in a 22nm technology and integrated into Cheshire, an open-source modular SoC. We examine the performance and efficiency of different microarchitectures using the same ISA, SoC, and implementation with identical technology, tools, and methodologies. The area and performance rankings of CVA6, CVA6S+, and C910 follow expected trends: compared to the scalar CVA6, CVA6S+ shows an area increase of 6% and an IPC improvement of 34.4%, while C910 exhibits a 75% increase in area and a 119.5% improvement in IPC. However, efficiency analysis reveals that CVA6S+ leads in area efficiency (GOPS/mm2), while the C910 is highly competitive in energy efficiency (GOPS/W). This challenges the common belief that high performance in superscalar and out-of-order cores inherently comes at a significant cost in area and energy efficiency.

Read in full here:

Where Next?

Popular General Dev topics Top

New
First poster: bot
Hush Keyboards with Hushboard. Yesterday while surfing the ASCII highways of IRC (yes, IRC) a URL linking to a MacOS application scrolle...
New
First poster: AstonJ
We engineered a wearable microphone jammer that is capable of disabling microphones in its user’s surroundings, including hidden micropho...
New
First poster: bot
Kinesis Advantage360 Ergonomic Keyboard. Split-adjustable, contoured design that maximizes comfort and boosts productivity. Mechanical s...
New
CommunityNews
Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it. Thanks to the DALL·E 2, we finally have a very nice graphic representation of the feelings of...
New
First poster: joeb
50 Shades of Go: Traps, Gotchas, and Common Mistakes for New Golang Devs. Go is a simple and fun language, but, like any other language,...
/go
New
First poster: FatimaAdamu
Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT. Law firm also penalised after chatbot invented six legal cases th...
New
CommunityNews
The Definitive PHP 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, and 8.1 Benchmarks (2023). We tested the performance of 14 PHP platforms (WordPress, Drupal, Lara...
New
First poster: AstonJ
Jan | Rethink the Computer. Jan turns your computer into an AI machine by running LLMs locally on your computer. It’s a privacy-focus, l...
New
New

Other popular topics Top

Devtalk
Hello Devtalk World! Please let us know a little about who you are and where you’re from :nerd_face:
New
Exadra37
Please tell us what is your preferred monitor setup for programming(not gaming) and why you have chosen it. Does your monitor have eye p...
New
AstonJ
SpaceVim seems to be gaining in features and popularity and I just wondered how it compares with SpaceMacs in 2020 - anyone have any thou...
New
AstonJ
poll poll Be sure to check out @Dusty’s article posted here: An Introduction to Alternative Keyboard Layouts It’s one of the best write-...
New
AstonJ
I ended up cancelling my Moonlander order as I think it’s just going to be a bit too bulky for me. I think the Planck and the Preonic (o...
New
AstonJ
I have seen the keycaps I want - they are due for a group-buy this week but won’t be delivered until October next year!!! :rofl: The Ser...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Jamis Buck @jamis This month, we have the pleasure of spotlighting author Jamis Buck, who has written Mazes for Prog...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Rebecca Skinner @RebeccaSkinner Welcome to our latest author spotlight, where we sit down with Rebecca Skinner, auth...
New
AstonJ
If you want a quick and easy way to block any website on your Mac using Little Snitch simply… File > New Rule: And select Deny, O...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight: VM Brasseur @vmbrasseur We have a treat for you today! We turn the spotlight onto Open Source as we sit down with V...
New