For the first tape out of nanosoc, the instruction memory was implemented using SRAM. Whilst this meant that the read bandwidth from this memory was very fast. It also meant that on a power-on-reset, all the code was erased as SRAM is volatile memory. An alternative use of non-volatile memory would benefit applications where  deployment of the ASIC does not allow, or simply time is not available for programming the SRAM after every power up. 

There has been much request within the SoC Labs community for an Arm A-Class SoC that can support a full operating system platform, undertake more complex compute tasks and enable more complicated software loads. The Cortex-A53 is Arm's most widely deployed 64-bit Armv8-A processor and can provide these capabilities with power efficiency

This project aims to design and implement a high capacity memory subsystem for Arm A series processor based SoC designs.  The current focus of the project is the design and implementation of a Memory Controller for DDR4 memory. 

The Synopsys HAPS® System adds additional capabilities to the FPGA-based prototyping environments SoC Labs can use to support projects. The HAPS® system provides a greater amount of logic resources supporting development of larger SoC designs. It can be used to support multiple projects simultaneously. It is used by many semiconductor companies, including arm for their CPU verification. This collaboration project will use the HAPS® system in SoC Labs projects and share with the community experience in utilising such systems.

This collaboration project is aimed at providing specific tailored activities to the local geography in Canada by developing local actions that will help stimulate academics and their institutions and the broader semiconductor industry supporters to create new and exciting SoC design projects. 

It may include holding specific local physical meetups where people can exchange design ideas.

It may include utilising locally provided routes to fabrication.

It may include sharing hard to locate test capability across academic institutions.

The Arm PL022 provides an interface for synchronous serial communication with peripheral devices connected to the  SoC via the Advanced Peripheral Bus (APB). It supports a choice of interface operation, Motorola compatible Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), National Semiconductor Microwire, or Texas Instruments synchronous serial interface. See the Techology page for details. 

To design and verify a simple PLL for use as generator of clock signals in System on Chip design. The desired outcome from this project should be the following:

The resulting IP for these component blocks will be made available to the soclabs community for the upcoming design contest.

Performing system-level verification on a System-on-Chip (SoC) design is crucial for ensuring the correct function and overall performance of the entire system, rather than individual components. This project is aimed at developing the necessary resources and design flow stages for the verification of the NanoSoC reference design.

With NanoSoC, there are multiple options for performing system-level verification. 

Motivation

At SoC Labs, we have need of an accelerator to test our SoC infrastructure and confirmation of our accelerator wrapper design to get size and performance information as well as to try and get ahead and uncover potential problems researchers may experience trying to put their IP into the reference SoC.

Specification

The preliminary design has been broken into two main blocks: