Enhancing OpenPiton+Ariane SoC With an Open-Source Advanced Interrupt Architecture (AIA)
- Mentors
- Jonathan Balkind, Sandro Pinto
- Organization
- Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation
- Technologies
- python, systemverilog
- Topics
- Advanced Interrupt Architecure, Message Signaled Interrupts
The Platform Level Interrupt Controller (PLIC) is the de facto interrupt controller in RISC-V systems. However, the specification has intrinsic limitations regarding scalability and feature richness, e.g., it lacks support for Message Signal Interrupts (MSI) and virtualization. The RISC-V Advanced Interrupt Architecture (AIA) is the new reference specification for interrupt handling. RISC-V International has just ratified the AIA specification. This project aims to integrate an (in-house) open-source AIA IP into the OpenPiton+Ariane platform and conduct an in-depth evaluation of the performance and suitability for general-purpose, multithreaded, manycore processors.