Programming FPGA based NoCs with Java

FPGAs enable NoC architecture experimentation, although to be effective they need to be supported by tools and frameworks for construction of the NoC and effective software programming of the NoC. In this paper, we focus upon effective programming of the NoC using Java, complementing previous work which proposes the Blueshell framework for NoC generation for FPGAs. The approach taken is called Network-Chi, providing a number of key extensions to the Chi Java compiler. This includes provision of a networking API within Java giving a mesh based abstraction for network communication, allowing the programmer to send Java objects to other nodes without consideration for the underlying hardware topology or protocols; and a region-based memory management API that enables the definition of transient allocation contexts that discard all objects allocated within them when they reach the end of execution. Results show the approach taken to be efficient and effective.