Autonomous Computing Systems: A Proof-of-Concept

This paper describes a proof-of-concept implementation of a basic autonomous computing system. The system consists of an XUP Virtex-II Pro board running Linux and a set of software tools on one of the embedded PowerPC processors. A server application accepts mapped EDIF circuit descriptions, which it independently parses, packs, places, routes, configures, connects, and implements within itself, while continuing to run, and without making use of the Xilinx ISE tools. It is also able to remove circuits and/or modify top-level connections at will. The system has complete autonomy in how and where to place and route the circuits: it understands all of the logic in the device, and uses true routing and not simply a slot-based architecture.