The MIPS architecture started off as an academic exercise by John Hennessy at Stanford University, and is the subject of a standard educational book by Hennessy and David Patterson.
Imagination University programme manager Robert Owen told Electronics Weekly:
“My mission is to re-energise the use of MIPS in academia, which is a key stimulator of commercial use .
“Usually universities are provided with cores that have been obfuscated – they look like a black box. I have been talking to professors all over the world, and they want a core where they can get under the hood. THe students need to take the lid off, see how it works and modify it.”
So Imagination is making available the RTL of its microAptive core – as used by Microchip in PIC32MZ microcontrollers.
The core is not exactly the core used by Microchip, but neither is it dumbed-down – it has a memory management unit (MMU), cache controller and JTAG boundary scan, for example.
Called MIPSfpga, it consists of a set of microAptive options selected by Professor David Harris, co-author of the book ‘Digital Design and Computer Architecture’. Professor Sarah Harris, the other author, has developed the MIPSfpga teaching materials.
One of the drivers for option selection, like the inclusion of a cache controller, was to make this a Linux-capable MicroAptive core.
As its name suggests, it is designed to be run in an FPGA, and guides are available to use it on the Digilent Nexys4 (Xilinx Artix-7) and the Terasic DE2 (Altera Cyclone) platforms. Some additional blocks, and driver software, are under development to get Linux up and running on the FPGAs – expected within three months.
To use the core, universities will have to register with Imagination – Harvey Mudd College California, Imperial College London, University College London (UCL), and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, have already done so.
Lecturers will have to sign a licence. “It is a very simple licence in plain English,” said Owen.
Taking the wraps off architectural RTL is not without risk as all or part of it could end up illegally copied.
Imagination has thought long and hard about the implication, and thinks releasing the IP is worth it, said Owen, pointing out that the MIPS organisation is used to dealing with companies who use its instruction set without permission, and their customers. “I don’t think we are going to end up chasing lecturers if it gets put in silicon illegally,” he added.
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