More robustness and flexibility for FPGA based networked embedded systems through hardware indirect proxies

An indirect proxy is the name of a special kind of component wrapper that is defined within the framework of a hybrid (hardware and software) object-oriented middleware for Systems-on-Chips (SoCs). Which makes indirect proxies so attractive for networked embedded designs is that they do not need to know the physical address of the destination in advance. Regardless the actual place the required functionality is deployed at (in-chip or somewhere in the network), the proposed infrastructure enables transparent communication from the communication parties perspective. This is especially suitable in changing scenarios such as those using dynamic reconfiguration or adaptive systems. Also, there are applications in the field of QoS in communications and transient or permanent error management for SoCs that get benefit from this approach. In this article, we develop the indirect proxy concept and explore its capabilities oriented to improve flexibility, dependability and performance of FPGA based networked systems. The feasibility of our proposal is demonstrated by the implementation of a prototype using the Xilinx technology.