A Reconfiguration Manager for Dynamically Reconfigurable Hardware

摘要

DYNAMICALLY RECONFIGURABLE HARDWARE (such as FPGAs), which allows partial reconfiguration at runtime, is a powerful, flexible way to deal with the dynamism of current multimedia applications, as well as with their high performance requirements. In fact, DRH resources are increasingly common in all kinds of platforms. However, two main drawbacks prevent the use of runtime reconfiguration in embedded real-time systems. The first is the lack of programming support for dynamic task placement. For example, it is possible to reconfigure current FPGAs at runtime to change part of their functionality. With this feature, the operating system can load tasks at runtime onto different FPGA regions and execute them in parallel. When a task finishes, the user can remove it and execute another task on the same region. However, FPGA platforms don't provide operating system support. Hence, the designer must find a way to allocate the tasks and support intertask communication.