Marmot RISC-V SoC

A Customizable RISC-V Microcomputer

A custom microcomputer design is useful when off-the-shelf general-purpose microcontrollers fail to meet the system needs. The rocket SoC generator automatically generate an SoC. It circumvents labor-intensive, error-prone, top-level SoC design.

SoC Customization Flow

The Rocket SoC Generator and Caravel SoC Template are reused to create a twin (not identical) RISC-V SoC consisting of one Rocket RISC-V and one Caravel RISC-V. The objectives here is to save hours on design verification and reduce power consumption rather than saving die area or chip cost.

graph TD
A(A SoC Wish List) -- SoC Description in Chisel--> B
B[The Rocket SoC Generator] --SoC RTL--> D[The OpenLane Flow]
C[Caravel SoC Harness] --Harness RTL--> D
B --FPGA RTL--> L
P[RISC-V IDE Tools]--Code and Executables-->H
L[_Yosys_+nextpnr] --Bitstream--> K[Lattice ECP5 Eval Board]
E(Caravel Firmware)  --Init, Monitoring, Debug--> C
D --Sky130 GDS II Layout Data--> F[eFabless MPW]
O[Xschema]--Circuit schematics-->J
F --MPW Chips--> H
F --MPW Chips--> I
I[Caravel EVB] --Breadboarding-->H{User system}
J[KiCad]--Gerber and BOM-->H

Implementing low power operations

The following shows a scheme to manage clock, reset, power and low power state.

sequenceDiagram
Note right of System: Powers<br/>Caravel<br/>Chip.
System -->> Harness: Reset
System -->> Harness: Reset
System -->> Caravel SoC: Reset
Harness -->> Caravel SoC: core clock
Harness -->> Caravel SoC: core reset
Caravel SoC->>Harness: Configuration of clk, DLL
Caravel SoC->>Harness: Configure pad data routing and GPIO
Harness-->>Rocket SoC: Set user_clock full speed
Caravel SoC->>Rocket SoC: Reset user logic
Note left of Rocket SoC: Rocket boots<br/>from ROM logic<br/>XIP SPI flash<br/>runs on DTIM.
Rocket SoC -->> Caravel SoC: Rocket is running OK
Note left of Caravel SoC: Acknoleging <br/>Rocket OK<br/>tuns off External<br/>CPG power<br/>via GPIO or I2C.
Caravel SoC->>System: Turn off External CPG Power
Note left of Rocket SoC: Rocket sends message<br/>"Bring Caravel<br/>to lowest power state"<br/>e.g. wishbone mailbox<br/>and interrupt.
Rocket SoC->>Caravel SoC: "Go low on power"
Note left of Caravel SoC: Management SoC sets<br/>Clocking and DLL<br/> to Caravel's<br/>lowest power state<br/>via System control.
Caravel SoC->> Harness: Caravel goes low power.
Note left of Rocket SoC: Rocket gets<br/>wake up signal<br/>from RTC.
Rocket SoC->>Caravel SoC: "Go full power"
Caravel SoC->>Harness: Configure Clock, DLL via System control
Caravel SoC->>Rocket SoC: "Went full power".

Peripheral Overviews

Pinouts

Address Map

Reference

Freedom E300 Arty FPGA Dev Kit https://github.com/sifive/freedom#freedom-e300-arty-fpga-dev-kit

Freedom E310-G002 Manual https://sifive.cdn.prismic.io/sifive/b56b304f-cd2d-421b-9c14-6b35c33f172e_fe310-g002-manual-v1p4.pdf

Krste Asanović, Rimas Avižienis, Jonathan Bachrach, Scott Beamer, David Biancolin, Christopher Celio, Henry Cook, Palmer Dabbelt, John Hauser, Adam Izraelevitz, Sagar Karandikar, Benjamin Keller, Donggyu Kim, John Koenig, Yunsup Lee, Eric Love, Martin Maas, Albert Magyar, Howard Mao, Miquel Moreto, Albert Ou, David Patterson, Brian Richards, Colin Schmidt, Stephen Twigg, Huy Vo, and Andrew Waterman, The Rocket Chip Generator, Technical Report UCB/EECS-2016-17, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, April 2016

eFabless Caravel Architecture https://caravel-harness.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting-started.html

Acknowledgements

This work is based on results obtained from project, JPNP16007, commissioned by The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).