Configurable Soft Processor Arrays Using the OpenFire

Single-chip multiprocessor systems, while requiring significantly less design effort than custom hardware solutions, fall behind custom RTL in performance. In an effort to decrease this performance gap, the individual processors in an array can be tailored to their specific application. In this paper we present the OpenFire, a Xilinx MicroBlaze-compatible processor designed for configurable array research. A sample application is presented demonstrating the benefits of configurable processor arrays. By sizing the datapath width to better suit an image filtering application the OpenFire processor is made smaller, allowing additional processors to be added to the array, thus increasing the overall throughput. I