RCC: A New Programming Language for Reconfigurable Computing

Reconfigurable computing is one of the most important developing directions of future high-performance computing, it combines the flexibility of general processors and the high efficiency of ASIC. Reconfigurable computing technology can make use of system resources sufficiently and exert the efficiency of the applications. Reconfigurable programming environment is the key to popularize reconfigurable computing technology. Software engineers can program FPGA by using reconfigurable programming language, and moreover, the reconfigurable compiler can provide an architecture-independent developing platform for high-level language programmers in order that they can use the reconfigurable computing system flexibly. Three typical reconfigurable computing systems are analyzed in this paper, including SGI RASC RC100, Cray XD1 and SRC-6E. Some typical reconfigurable programming environments are introduced, such as the Mitrion-C platform, the Impulse-C platform, etc. However, neither of them is convenient enough for software engineers to program FPGA. In this paper, a more useful reconfigurable programming language called RCC (Reconfigurable Computing C) is proposed. It is based on the subset of ANSI-C and extends some data types and functions. A RCC compiler is built to translate the RCC applications into VHDL description. Users can program FPGA easily by using the RCC language if they are familiar with ANSI-C. On FPGA simulator, we test 3 applications and get about 19X speedup. Furthermore, it is easier to use than some typical reconfigurable programming languages.