Contributor
Kinza Qamar Zaman

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.