Self-reconfiguration of communication interfaces

Designers of modern system implementations more and more have to consider the aspect of reconfigurability in their designs. These systems have to cope with changing environments and user requirements. Furthermore, increasing development costs and the high time-to-market pressure require adaptable systems. Introducing reconfigurability mechanisms, different applications can be realized. When functionality is reconfigured, the communication aspect becomes important. In many cases the communication interfaces also have to be reconfigured. In our approach, we suggest a memory-based solution where the interface, which is implemented on a Xilinx FPGA, is reconfigured by a self-triggered reconfiguration process. To realize this process we base our approach on a highly efficient interface architecture template. First case studies show the applicability of our approach.