NoX: a Compact Open-Source RISC-V Processor for Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chip

TL;DR

NoX is a compact, open-source 32-bit RISC-V core optimized for multi-processor systems-on-chip, enabling efficient data processing for resource-constrained IoT edge applications.

Contribution

It introduces NoX, a plug-and-play RISC-V core designed in System Verilog that improves resource efficiency and performance in MPSoCs for edge computing.

Findings

NoX achieves better resource usage compared to existing cores.

NoX provides a balanced performance-resource trade-off.

The core is designed for efficient data processing in resource-constrained environments.

Abstract

IoT applications are one of the driving forces in making systems energy and power-efficient, given their resource constraints. However, because of security, latency, and transmission, we advocate for local computing through multi-processor systems-on-chip (MPSoCs) for edge computing. The RISC-V ISA has grown in academia and industry due to its flexibility. Still, available open-source cores cannot be seamlessly integrated into MPSoCs for a fast time to market. This paper presents NoX, a compact open-source plug-and-play 32-bit RISC-V core designed in System Verilog for efficient data processing in MPSoCs. NoX has a 4-stage single-issue in-order pipeline with full bypass, providing an efficient resource-constrained architecture. Compared to industry and academia resource-constrained RISC-V cores, NoX offers a better resource usage and performance trade-off.