A Qualitative Approach to Agile Hardware Design

Abstract

The recent, dramatic rise of small hardware startups illustrates the demand for rapid, low-cost ASIC design.While researchers borrow Agile principles from software engineering, such as quick iteration, aggressive reuse, and continuous integration, their methodologies have struggled to escape small labs. Unfortunately, there remain clear challenges to broader adoption. Effective research evaluation techniques often do not scale to larger, more complex design flows. Conversely, risk aversity means that traditional hardware design methodologies can be rigid and slow to adapt. The result is that despite measurable quantitative improvements, traditional Agile design methodologies cannot be practically applied in complex SoC designs. This thesis presents a comprehensive approach to Agile Hardware Design through three tools: BSG Pearls, BlackParrot, and ZynqParrot. All three projects are open-source, silicon-proven, and available for immediate use under a permissive BSD-3 License.Hardware designers can leverage these efforts to make Agile Hardware Design qualitatively more feasible across a wide variety of research and commercial projects.