A virtual machine for merit-based runtime reconfiguration

This work advocates a merit-based reconfiguration policy. In the merit-based approach, each kernel that has a hardware implementation also has a software implementation. A runtime system performs continuous profiling of the application to decide which hardware reconfigurations are most profitable at any given time. Such a system can minimize thrashing, keeping the set of hardware-resident functionality constant over short intervals while still adapting to phased behavior in the application. Consequently, the system is better able to tolerate reconfiguration latencies. The main contribution of this work is the exhibition of a simple "merit" heuristic that can be used to direct reconfiguration. In this synopsis we present a brief overview of our ongoing work. First, a simple online algorithm for calculating a figure-of-merit for RTR systems is formalized. Next we describe its implementation and demonstrate a working prototype.