PRGA: An Open-Source FPGA Research and Prototyping Framework

Abstract

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) are being used in a fast-growing range of scenarios, and heterogeneous CPU-FPGA systems are being tapped as a possible way to mitigate the challenges posed by the end of Moore's Law. This growth in diverse use cases has fueled the need to customize FPGA architectures for particular applications or application domains. While high-level FPGA models can help explore the FPGA architecture space, as FPGAs move to more advanced design nodes, there is an increased need for low-level FPGA research and prototyping platforms that can be brought all the way to fabrication. This paper presents Princeton Reconfigurable Gate Array (PRGA), a highly customizable, scalable, and complete open-source framework for building custom FPGAs. The framework's core functions include generating synthesizable Verilog from user-specified FPGA architectures, and providing a complete, auto-generated, open-source CAD toolchain for the custom FPGAs. Developed in Python, PRGA provides a user-friendly API and supports use both as a standalone FPGA as well as an embedded FPGA. PRGA is a great platform for FPGA architecture research, FPGA configuration memory research, FPGA CAD tool research, and heterogeneous systems research. It is also a completely open-source framework for designers who need a free and customizable FPGA IP core. An FPGA designed with PRGA is placed and routed using standard cell libraries. The design is evaluated and compared to prior works, providing comparable performance and increased configurability.