Consistency (knowledge bases)

Design flow

Application-specific integrated circuit

Biology

Operating system

Software engineering

System on a chip

Computer architecture

Agile software development

Embedded system

Artificial intelligence

Ecology

System integration

Integrated design

Computer science

Field-programmable gate array

IEEE Micro

Continued improvement in computing efficiency requires functional specialization of hardware designs. Agile hardware design methodologies have been proposed to alleviate the increased design costs of custom silicon architectures, but their practice thus far has been accompanied with challenges in integration and validation of complex systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). We present the Chipyard framework, an integrated SoC design, simulation, and implementation environment for specialized compute systems. Chipyard includes configurable, composable, open-source, generator-based IP blocks that can be used across multiple stages of the hardware development flow while maintaining design intent and integration consistency. Through cloud-hosted FPGA accelerated simulation and rapid ASIC implementation, Chipyard enables continuous validation of physically realizable customized systems.

Chipyard: Integrated Design, Simulation, and Implementation Framework for Custom SoCs