Title :
A Modular Peripheral to Support Self-Reconfiguration in SoCs
Author :
Otero, Andrés ; Morales-Cas, Ángel ; Portilla, Jorge ; De la Torre, Eduardo ; Riesgo, Teresa
Author_Institution :
Centro de Electron. Ind., Univ. Politec. de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Abstract :
In this paper, a solution to support the run-time read back, relocation and replication of cores in embedded systems with dynamic and partial reconfiguration capabilities is presented. The proposal shows a peripheral structure that allows an easy integration and communication with the rest of the system, including an API to make the reconfiguration details to be more transparent to software applications. Differently to other proposals, all functionality is implemented in hardware, achieving a higher reconfiguration speed. In addition, different design decisions have been taken in order to increase the portability of the solution to existing and, possibly, future FPGAs. Finally, a use case is provided, which shows the features of this module applied to the run-time scaling of a hardware coprocessor.
Keywords :
application program interfaces; coprocessors; electronic engineering computing; embedded systems; field programmable gate arrays; reconfigurable architectures; system-on-chip; API; FPGA; SoC; dynamic reconfiguration capability; embedded system; hardware coprocessor; modular peripheral; partial reconfiguration capability; peripheral structure; run-time read back; self-reconfiguration; software application; Computer architecture; Embedded systems; Field programmable gate arrays; Hardware; Performance evaluation; Registers; Dynamic Reconfiguration; FPGA; Scalability; core relocation;
Conference_Titel :
Digital System Design: Architectures, Methods and Tools (DSD), 2010 13th Euromicro Conference on
Conference_Location :
Lille
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-7839-2
DOI :
10.1109/DSD.2010.100
