FaRM: Fast Reconfiguration Manager for Reducing Reconfiguration Time Overhead on FPGA

摘要

In this paper, we present a fast ICAP controller providing high-speed configuration and easy-to-use readback capabilities, reducing configuration overhead as much as possible. In order to enhance performance, FaRM uses techniques such as DMA, ICAP overclocking, bitstream pre-load into controller and bitstream compression, using an evolution of the Run Length Encoding algorithm. We also propose a reconfiguration overhead estimation model which gives a good idea of the overhead. This approach is tested with an AES encryption/decryption architecture. With proper ICAP overclocking to 200 MHz, we are able to reach the ICAP upper bound throughput of 800 MB/s.