Rad-hard RISC-V SoC and ASIP ecosystems studies for high-energy physics applications

Abstract

The increase in complexity and size of modern ASIC designs in the HEP community and the use of advanced semiconductor fabrication processes raises the need for a shift toward a more abstract design methodology, that takes advantage of modularity and programmability to achieve a faster turnaround time both for design and verification. This contribution will present two complementary approaches, one using a RISC-V based System-on-Chip (SoC) and the other based on Application-Specific Instruction set Processors (ASIP). The SoC uses the PicoRV32 open-source RISC-V core and a rad-hard version of the AMBA APB bus to connect peripherals and is primarily geared towards control and monitoring applications. This solution is a demonstrator of what can become a more complete fully radiation-tolerant SoC platform with a standardized interconnect and an IP block library, to serve as the starting point for future ASIC designs. The ASIP based approach targets more the design of data path elements and the use in data processing applications. The presented approach makes use of a commercial ASIP Designer EDA tool to demonstrate an integrated workflow to define, benchmark and optimize an ASIP for a specific use case, starting from a general-purpose processor.