Improving Performance of Embedded Processors with a High-Performance Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Data-Path

摘要

An embedded system that extends microprocessor cores with a high-performance Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Data-Path is introduced. The data-path is composed by computational resources able to realize complex operations which aid in improving the performance of time critical application parts, called kernels. A compilation flow is defined for mapping high-level software descriptions to the microprocessor system. The kernel code is mapped using a properly developed mapping algorithm for the Reconfigurable Data-Path. Extensive exploration is performed by mapping four real-life applications on three different instances of the system. Important overall application speedups have been reported that range from 1.70 to 3.68 relative to an all-processor execution.