The METASAT hardware platform: A high-performance multicore, AI SIMD and GPU RISC-V platform for on-board processing

The METASAT Horizon Europe project which is funded by the European Commission and started in January 2023, will enable model-based design methodologies in order to manage the complexity of upcoming hardware and software for space on-board processing. As a representative high performance platform for on-board processing, METASAT will design a multi-core platform featuring accelerators prototyped on an FPGA. This includes both an AI SIMD accelerator tightly integrated with the CPU, as well as a GPU. All hardware components of the METASAT platform will be open source and based on the RISC-V open ISA. In this paper, we provide an overview of the platform architecture as well as preliminary implementation decisions, current development status and early results.
This work was supported by the European Community’s Horizon Europe programme under the METASAT project (grant agreement 101082622). In addition, it was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grants PID2019-107255GBC21 and IJC-2020-045931-I ( Spanish State Research Agency / Agencia Espanola de Investigacion (AEI) / http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100011033 ) and by the Department of Research and Universities of the Government of Catalonia with a grant to the CAOS Research Group (Code: 2021 SGR 00637).
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