BPcore Silicon | NeuraEdge™ NPU

Performance & Integration

Production-validated, reproducible integration: move from evaluation to silicon with deterministic artifacts, scalable architecture, and quantified efficiency gains.

Integration Roadmap

Phase	Task	Confidence Gate	Duration
Bring‑up	Simulation smoke + adapter connect	Protocol A/B match	< 1 day
Validation	Protocol & numeric determinism runs	Byte‑identical CSV	~2 min
Stress	Flow control, resets, boundary dims	All PASS, no deadlock	~30 min
Optimization	Mesh scaling, FIFO tuning, DVFS partition	Watermarks & timing margin reviewed	2–3 days
Formal	Handshake & routing liveness proofs	Formal PASS	~4 hours
Synthesis	Vendor flow iteration, multi‑corner STA	100 MHz @TT/FF (post‑place)	1–2 weeks

Verification Strategy

Level	Coverage	Validation Evidence	Time
Protocol Determinism	Flow control, ready/valid, stall scenarios	Dual‑run byte‑identical CSVs	~2 min
Numeric Corners	Int8→Int32 accumulation limits	Digest golden match, no compute errors	~5 min
Boundary Dims	Odd GEMM shapes, partial tiles, edge padding	Per‑workload logs + trace	~10 min
Stress	Source/sink stalls, resets, watchdog	No deadlock, no stalls > threshold	~15 min
Sparsity Toggle	Adaptive FSM enable/disable, lane skipping	Speedup vs. density ratio logged	~5 min
Formal Proof	Routing progress, credit safety, FIFO bounds	Liveness & deadlock‑freedom verified	~4 hours

Efficiency Levers & Performance Multipliers

Lever	Mechanism	Typical Uplift	Trade‑off
Int8 Accumulation	Dense MAC packing → int32 results	2–3× vs. int32 native	Fixed precision
Sparsity Skipping	Adaptive FSM masks zero‑lanes	1.5–2.5× on sparse kernels	Scheduler complexity
3‑Stage Pipeline	Router input + FIFO write decoupling	62% critical path reduction	+3.5% area, +20% power
DVFS Partitioning	Independent mesh / PE / adapter freq	15–25% system power	CDC integration
Clock Gating	Disable FIFOs & idle router ports	10–20% dynamic power reduction	Negligible latency
Mesh Scaling	Tile parallelism (2×2 → 4×4 → N×N)	Near‑linear throughput to ~3–4×	Routing congestion

Mesh Scaling

Config	Tiles	Throughput
1×1	1	1.0×
2×2	4	~3.6×
3×3	9	~7.5×
4×4	16	~13×

*Estimates assume moderate sparsity & balanced workload.

DVFS Ramp Profile

Phase	Mesh	PE	Use Case
Init	100 MHz	100 MHz	Debug
Ramp	200 MHz	300 MHz	Light Inf
Peak	400 MHz	600 MHz	Burst
Throttle	250 MHz	300 MHz	Sustained

Silicon Readiness

Clock Gating Wrappers	✅ Included
DVFS Reset/Clock Modules	✅ Included
Scalable Mesh RTL	✅ Parameterized
Sparsity Primitives	✅ Enabled
Lint Hardening	✅ Pre-hardened
Timing-Optimized RTL	✅ 100 MHz Validated

Confidence Artifacts

protocol_flow.csv	Flow robustness metrics
protocol_micro.csv	Micro-kernel determinism
numeric.csv	Int8→Int32 corner validation
per_workload.log	Per-cycle handshake trace
VCD (on failure)	Debug root cause
formal_report.txt	Liveness & deadlock proof

Risk Mitigation Plan

Risk	Mitigation	Validation Gate
Deadlock in stress suite	XY routing + fair arbitration	Stress suite passes with zero hangs
Watchdog false positives	Configurable timeout	No spurious flags post-hardening
Boundary dim failures	Exhaustive odd GEMM/MLP matrix	All odd dims 1..8 PASS
Reset recovery glitches	Mid-stream async reset validated	Mid-reset workload continues
Multi-corner timing	100 MHz post-placement baseline	WNS margins: TT ≥ +2.0ns

Fast-Path Integration Checklist

1Clone & lock SHA → Record baseline git commit
2Run protocol A/B → Verify byte‑identical digests (< 2 min)
3Execute numeric corners → Confirm no saturation errors (< 5 min)
4Stress suite → No deadlock, watchdog silent (< 15 min)
5Inspect FIFO watermarks → Note peak occupancy per direction
6Tune FIFO depths → Start at 4; increment if sustained occupancy near depth‑1
7Enable pipeline defines → Set ENABLE_PIPELINE_ROUTER=1 for 100 MHz
8Multi-corner STA → Post-placement validation (TT/FF margins verified)
9Formal proofs → Routing progress + credit safety (expect PASS)
10Sparsity toggle → Optional enable; measure MAC efficiency uplift