An era has an era architecture.
In the PC era, CPU is king, and in the smartphone era, the demand for multimedia and graphics rendering is increasing, and the importance of CPU and GPU is gradually balanced. In today's era of smart cars and cloud computing, the demand for AI computing has increased greatly, the evolution of general-purpose processors has encountered bottlenecks, chip power consumption and cost have risen sharply, and the performance of single-core performance and multi-core architecture has become slower and slower.
Therefore, computing architectures for the AI era are on the horizon.
In 2017, Turing Award winners John Hennessy and David Patterson pointed out in their keynote speech "The Golden Age of Computer Architecture Architecture" that due to the current performance bottleneck of general computing, it is necessary to develop targeted optimization architecture for different application scenarios, and the solution they gave is DSA.
The so-called DSA (domain specific architecture) is a programmable processor customized for a specific domain, which can be used to accelerate certain applications to achieve better performance and price/performance.
Especially under the current trend of slowing down Moore's Law, DSA has become an important technical concept to continuously improve processor performance, that is, the use of programmable ASICs to accelerate specific high-intensity processor loads, such as accelerating graphics rendering, accelerating forward inference computation of AI neural networks, and improving the throughput of huge network data.
It can be simply understood that the general computing chip architecture represented by the CPU has been unable to match and meet the current market demand well, so in the AI, cloud computing, automatic driving and other new technologies and applications emerge endlessly, "better than fine" has become the evolution trend of the processor architecture, behind the surge in demand for intelligent computing is the transformation from traditional general-purpose chips to processor chips in the dedicated field.
Based on this trend, many companies have opened the practice of DSA, launched DSA processors for specific field applications, so including NPU, TPU, DPU, DSP, etc. A variety of "XPU" came into being, although these chip categories are different, the applicable fields are different, but as a new chip specially designed for AI tasks and specific field needs, they have the advantages of lower power consumption, high computing performance and lower cost than general computing.
It is not difficult to judge that customized and heterogeneous DSA, as the backbone of the computing power of the entire system, will become the trend of future processor architecture and is expected to play a greater value in the next generation of computing platforms.
DSA is all the rage, EDA is in dire need of innovation
It is not difficult to understand that the goal of DSA is to improve the energy efficiency ratio of computing to better meet the differentiation of SoC designs in specific fields, energy efficiency ratio, and time-to-market.
However, while the AI era provides more possibilities for DSA processor application scenarios, it also poses higher challenges to the efficiency of chip research and development.
In the actual development process of DSA chip companies, traditional EDA tools have problems such as costly, time-consuming, costly, and risky. Especially in the post-Moore era when the chip industry is so "volume", under the dual pressure of the exponential increase in the scale of dedicated processors and the rapid shortening of the time to market, how to quickly generate dedicated processors, double the efficiency of processor design, and accelerate product iteration has become the key to market success.
This also places new demands on EDA tools. In this regard, through a deep understanding of industry needs and long-term accumulation of professional knowledge and experience, XinYihui has launched a disruptive EDA software tool that empowers dedicated computing - FARMStudio.
According to Xu Yong, co-founder of XinYihui, FARMStudio is a dedicated processor generation tool described in C language and based on RISC-V basic instruction set, which enables engineers to freely explore computing architecture, optimize PPA, and quickly converge to the best design for application scenarios of intensive computing and complex data processing.
Based on the FARM design methodology, the tool refers to the DSA design paradigm, which can be easily explored for different applications and processor performance under different architectures, and users only need to enter the basic core, super instructions, and preset templates in the software to automatically generate processor hardware and software toolchains that meet the user's functions and performance descriptions in minutes, and provide relevant FPGA development and verification platforms. RTOS, associated math libraries, and application-layer software packages can also be delivered to minimize time to market and increase competitiveness.
As an EDA platform that automatically generates dedicated processors, FARMStudio has many advantages:
- Accelerate the process: Automatically generate DSA processors and supporting tool chains in minutes, which can minimize the time to market and improve competitiveness;
- FARM multi-level verification: Realize fast chip design in C language, and comprehensively ensure the correctness and consistency of C to RTL;
- Flexible and efficient: explore "shift left" and "shift right" decision-making, make architecture exploration and hardware design more flexible, and obtain DSA processors that best meet specific needs;
- Independent and controllable: FARMStudio has complete technical reserves and an open ecosystem to achieve localization and independent control.
- Resource reuse: Resource reuse of custom instructions and prefabricated instructions
As Xu Yong said, with the exponential rise in chip scale and chip manufacturing costs, the decision of chip projects cannot wait until the completion of chip development and production, but needs to be divided and verified according to application requirements in the pre-research stage, to actually evaluate whether the performance requirements can finally be achieved.
Compared with the traditional design process, the decision-making in the traditional design process is often accompanied by greater uncertainty, and the design parallelization based on FARMStudio is used to help customers reduce decision-making risks and accelerate customer R&D by moving the "software and hardware collaboration, design optimization, verification" and other processes to the left, and the rapid response of the tool in minutes.
The reason why we can achieve the above disruptive advantages, Xu Yong said in an interview with Semiconductor Industry Observer, first of all, we take innovation as the starting point and urgently want to innovate; In addition, the company's R&D team is strong, led by scientists with more than 40 years of industry experience, and the team accounts for 80% of talents with master's degree or above, and has a good understanding of the pain points and development trends of the industry.
On this basis, through the integration of thinking methods, XinYihui carries out in-depth technological innovation and integration, and achieves a series of technological breakthroughs:
- Based on RISC-V basic instructions, no microarchitecture knowledge is required, and it is independently controllable
- Based on C language, software and hardware design language unified, the world's first
- Automatically generate DSA processor and supporting toolchain in minutes
- High-performance compiler, support automatic VLIW, automatic pipeline arrangement
- Multi-level verification environment, instruction level verification is implemented on the X86 platform, the world's unique
- Cycle-accurate simulator with the fastest simulation speed in the industry up to MHz
- FPGA cloud development and test environment, plug and play
- Embedded OS, automatic configuration
With the blessing of many breakthrough technologies and advantages, FARMStudio tool embeds DSA design paradigms for rich application scenarios, which is convenient for customers to quickly integrate, optimize and verify DSA processors, which can be widely used in customized processor solutions for vision, AI, communications, audio, DPU, industrial control and other fields, helping chip design companies break through the upper limit of traditional IP energy efficiency and adapt to the continuous iteration of algorithms and products at a lower cost.
In this regard, Xu Ming, marketing director of XinYihui, took the two typical application directions of DSP and NPU as examples to show the advantages and flexibility of using the FARM methodology to develop DSA processors.
Among them, DSP, as a typical processor in the current chip market, is particularly suitable for quickly realizing the processing and operation of various digital signals, and has become the key core in AI, computer vision, audio and other fields. In terms of developing DSPs, FARM methodology has great advantages, using FARMStudio tools, through non-standard data types, personalized decimal calibration and refining algorithm requirements of typical application scenarios, focusing on different application directions to provide flexible optional components to accelerate the design, development and verification process of DSP. This also includes dedicated acceleration instructions, which can significantly improve performance and resource utilization with a powerful compiler.
Xu Ming said that compared with traditional DSP IP, the FARMStudio platform can obtain more extreme performance with less area and power consumption, smaller code size, and meet the data computing needs of processing-intensive applications in the digital era.
In addition, the development of NPU through the FARM methodology also has many advantages, including application demand-driven NPU design, different architecture paradigms to adapt to complex application requirements, support for non-standard data types, support for memory architecture customization, etc., which can help NPU chips pursue extreme performance while greatly reducing labor and time costs.
"On the whole, the FARM methodology is flexible and efficient, reducing the cost of processor development by orders of magnitude; Subvert functions and break through the boundaries of traditional processor IP capabilities; Independent and controllable, a variety of cooperation methods to solve customer processor needs. Xu Ming concluded.
Along with technological innovation, there is also the thinking and redefinition of its business model by XinYihui.
According to reports, FARMStudio tools are divided into two types: enterprise version and personal version, and the enterprise version supports software tool chain, emulator, SDK/OS, RTL download, expert technical support and other functions; The personal version reduces the RTL download function on the basis of the enterprise version, and the expert technical support is adjusted to online technical support.
"Compared with other EDA/IP vendors' tens of millions of licensing fees and 1%-2% or even higher royalties, FARMStudio Enterprise Edition adopts a 1+1 pricing model, that is, EDA licensing fee of RMB 1 million + ASP royalty of 1% per year; It is also released for a personal version, which only costs 299 RMB per year, but cannot be used for commercial purposes. Xu Yong added.
Regarding the reasons for launching the personal version, Xu Yong emphasized that the core of EDA is user usage, and on the one hand, the personal version can improve user usage, unlock personal understanding of the industry, and contribute to ecological cultivation; On the other hand, it can be used to accelerate the collection of user feedback and lay the foundation for subsequent updates and iterations of its own software.
In summary, as a dedicated processor generation tool described in C language and based on RISC-V basic instruction set, FARMStudio has independent intellectual property rights, and helping customers efficiently accumulate self-developed IP is its core competitiveness. With this advantage, FARMStudio can lower the threshold for engineers, improve the skill tree energy level of engineers, freely explore architecture, optimize hardware in minutes, and then double the chip design efficiency and contribute to China's semiconductor industry.
In the golden age of computing architecture, domestic EDA has ushered in an inflection point
As we all know, with the increasing complexity of chip design, EDA has penetrated into all aspects of chip design and production, and EDA has become more and more closely integrated with the industrial chain, which has become a key driver to improve design efficiency and accelerate technological progress.
At the same time, the leverage effect of EDA is significant, according to SEMI data, the global EDA market size in 2021 is only 13.2 billion US dollars, but it leverages hundreds of billions of dollars of integrated circuit industry, and the digital economy of tens of trillions behind it, its attributes and importance can be seen.
In recent years, affected by geopolitical relations, Continental has faced a crisis in the neck of key core technologies in many semiconductor fields, including EDA. Therefore, how to break the monopoly as soon as possible and realize "independent and controllable" in related fields has become a broad consensus of the whole society.
In 2021, the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Software and Information Technology Service Industry" issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology proposed to focus on breaking through industrial software, and EDA, as the crown jewel of industrial software, is where the shortcomings lie and is also the key direction of future efforts.
In this context, domestic EDA manufacturers are making full efforts to catch up, and XinYihui is also established in this process and gradually growing, achieving technological breakthroughs in the field of special computing, solving a series of complex challenges and problems of industry customers in the actual development process of chips, and subverting the long-term monopoly of foreign giants in the EDA field.
FARMStudio tools have been tested and used by many IC manufacturers at home and abroad, and the application market covers mobile phones, security, automotive, communications, consumer electronics, industrial control and many other fields, and is developing into an important part of the integrated circuit industry ecology independently developed in mainland China.
Xu Yong said that in recent years, with more policies and more policies, related technologies are becoming increasingly mature, and domestic EDA enterprises are ushering in a golden period of development. We also look forward to seeing the increasingly intensified market competition in the EDA industry, giving birth to more and more advanced domestic EDA tools to jointly promote the further development of China's integrated circuit industry.
As an enabler of the chip design industry, XinYihui independently develops forward-looking technologies for dedicated processor design and verification automation, provides a one-stop platform for processor development, automatically generates the best matching software and hardware collaboration solutions for rich application scenarios, and provides new design methodologies, tools and best practices for the growing demand for chip design in China and even the world.
As John Hennessy and David Patterson mentioned at the beginning of the article, computer architecture is ushering in a new golden age.
For XinYihui, this is also an opportunity for them.