Accelerating a Classic 3D Video Game on Heterogeneous Reconfigurable MPSoCs

Abstract

Heterogeneous Reconfigurable MPSoCs, coupling microprocessors with Programmable Logic, are becoming extremely important in High-Performance Embedded Computing domain where energy consumption is a key factor to be considered by every designer. However, efficient hardware/software co-design still requires experience and a big effort: finding an optimal solution and an acceptable trade-off between performance and energy may require several tests and it is strongly platform-dependent. To this respect, a Dataflow-based method is used in this work for exploring different hardware/software configurations (number of hardware accelerators and FPGA frequency). As a use case, the acceleration of a well-known 3D video game (DOOM) is presented. The method offers rapid trade-off analysis in terms of non-functional parameters such as computing performance or power/energy measurements. Extensive experimental results show that is possible to speed up the game and, at the same time, reduce the energy consumption of the whole platform. A custom Linux-based Operating System for Zynq Ultrascale+ was created, including a GPU driver to support a graphical interface on an HDMI screen and drivers to manage custom hardware accelerators on the FPGA side. The best solution to save up to 63% of energy corresponds to the use of four parallel hardware accelerators, where a function speed up of x3.6 and an application speed up of x2 (in line with Amdahl’s law) is obtained. Additionally, a set of Pareto optimal solutions are reported in the results section.