Task Relocation by Bitstream Manipulation in Virtex-II/Pro FPGAs

REPLICA2Pro: Task Relocation by Bitstream Manipulation in Virtex-II/Pro FPGAs

Conference On Computing Frontiers

Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Computing frontiers，2006

 Abstract: One vision of dynamic hardware reconfiguration is to deliver virtually unlimited hardware resources to a set of hardware tasks implementing arbitrary functions. By using partial reconfiguration, these tasks can be allocated and de-allocated on the reconfigurable architecture while others continue to operate. However, the exact placement of each task can only be determined during runtime according to the current resource allocation. This requires relocating each task from its original position after place and route to an area of available resources. The process of relocating tasks can result in a major time overhead. In order to solve this problem we have developed the REPLICA2Pro (Relocation per online Configuration Alteration in Virtex-2/-Pro) filter, which is capable of performing task relocations by manipulating the task’s bitstream during the regular allocation process without any extra time overhead. The filter architecture, our reconfigurable system approach as well as our design flow and an experimental system setup are presented in this paper.摘要：一种动态硬件配置方法是，给一个硬件函数集合分配无限的硬件资源，来实现任意的函数。通过部分重配，这些硬件函数在可重配架构中被分配或重新分配，同时其他的硬件函数继续工作。然而，根据现在的资源分配算法，每个task的确切的放置地仅仅能够在运行时刻被确定。这需要再可分配资源被布线之后，在原来的所在位置处分配每个task.这个重新分配task的过程带来很大的时间开销。为了解决这个问题，作者提出一种REPLIC2Pro滤波器，它通过在正常的分配过程忠，对task的bitstream进行控制，能够进行task重分配，而没有额外的时间开销。