SoC self-integration mechanism for dynamic reconfigurable systems based on collaborative macro-function units

For most multi-modal stream processing tasks Dynamic Reconfigurable Systems-on-Chip (SoC) have demonstrated high efficiency in cost and power. These systems utilize partial reconfiguration for dynamic adaptation to changes in the workload or in environment. Mostly, reconfiguration mechanisms are based on central resource management sub-systems deployed in a CPU-core. In this paper we propose a novel mechanism for SoC self-integration based on Collaborative Macro-Function Units (CMFU). Each CMFU consist of a function-specific IP-core combined with a Co-op unit. Co-op units allow CMFUs to co-operate with each other and provide run-time self-integration into the SoC. As well, they provide self-initiation, self-termination and self-synchronization procedures without any central control. This allows a dramatic increase in SoC flexibility, reliability and, finally, survivability. It is specifically important to mitigate hardware faults caused by radiation effects or aging of the die. The proposed mechanism was implemented and tested on a Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA platform. It was shown that CMFUs can perform self-integration and relocation inside the FPGA almost seamlessly. The hardware overhead of the Co-op unit was relatively small (less than 10% of the entire CMFUs).