A library of FPGA designs and reusable modules for I/O and internal connectivity in SpiNNaker systems.
The modules directory contains a selection of reusable Verilog modules which
all share a common interface.
See the README.md included with each module for general information or see the module itself for a concrete
interface description.
The designs directory contains ready-to-synthesise FPGA designs based on the
modules in the library. For example,
designs/spinnaker_fpgas
contains the complete code for spiNNlink, the SpiNNaker SpiNN-5 board FPGA design.
See designs/README.md
for general advice on how to build these designs.
Test benches are included with some modules and designs and are denoted by the suffix _tb.
spiNNlink is the high-speed, serial (hss) board-to-board SpiNNaker interconnect. It is implemented on three Spartan-6 FPGAs present on the SpiNN-5 board and is designed to provide transparent board-to-board connectivity. The details of the spiNNlink protocol are described in the spiNNlink Frame Transport Specification.
Verilog code for the spiNNlink modules is located in modules/hss_multiplexer. See designs/spinnaker_fpgas for an example of how to use spiNNlink.
The following publication describes the SpiNNlink specification and implementation:
LA Plana, J Garside, J Heathcote, J Pepper, S Temple, S Davidson, M Luján and S Furber, spiNNlink: FPGA-Based Interconnect for the Million-Core SpiNNaker System, in IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 84918-84928, 2020, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2991038.
spif is an FPGA-based platform to interface event-based peripherals, such as event cameras and event-based robotic actuators, to a SpiNNaker system. spif is built on top of spI/O and connects to the SpiNNaker system using a SATA cable and the spiNNlink protocol used in SpiNNaker systems for board-to-board interconnect.
The spI/O library was developed as part of several research projects and PhD programmes which are now finished. Currently there is no active development/maintenance work.
This repository maintains a list of issues which describe the state of the library. Open issues include known bugs, potential enhancements and open questions.
The designs in this repository are largely the work of:
With the collaboration of:
All affiliated, at the time of their contribution, with The University of Manchester.
See the LICENSE file for license rights and limitations (BSD 3-Clause).
Work on this repository started as part of the project 'A scalable chip multiprocessor for large-scale neural simulation'. The project was supported by EPSRC (the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) under grant EP/D07908X/1. Further development was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement 320689.
Aspects of the spiNNlink design, in particular, benefited from a collaboration with colleagues from Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla (IMSE-CNM), Spain.
We gratefully acknowledge these institutions and individuals for their support.