Architecture Emulation and Simulation of Future Many-Core Epiphany RISC Array Processors

Abstract

The Adapteva Epiphany many-core architecture comprises a scalable 2D mesh Network-on-Chip (NoC) of low-power RISC cores with minimal uncore functionality. The Epiphany architecture has demonstrated significantly higher power-efficiency compared with other more conventional general-purpose floating-point processors. The original 32-bit architecture has been updated to create a 1,024-core 64-bit processor recently fabricated using a 16 nm process. We present here our recent work in developing an emulation and simulation capability for future many-core processors based on the Epiphany architecture. We have developed an Epiphany SoC device emulator that can be installed as a virtual device on an ordinary x86 platform and utilized with the existing software stack used to support physical devices, thus creating a seamless software development environment capable of targeting new processor designs just as they would be interfaced on a real platform. These virtual Epiphany devices can be used for research in the area of many-core RISC array processors in general.