An Architecture and Programming Framework for Dynamic Reconfigurable Computing Systems

Dynamic reconfigurable computing (DRC) system is becoming increasingly attractive with its potential to combine high performance and rich functionality. But problems exist in practical application of DRC, such as that designers need to know the architectural and physical details of reconfigurable device. To address this issue, a framework with hybrid architecture and transparent programming model has been proposed in this paper, which allows designers develop applications independently of the underlying physical devices. The hybrid architecture consists of microprocessors and reconfigurable hardware accelerators with corresponding control and management units. Hardware and software functions are described with function libraries that can be called in same manner by application designers. Compilation and synthesis processes are discussed to map the system description to the hybrid architecture. It is believed that this framework will be helpful to increase the development efficiency on reconfigurable computing platform.