Reconfigurable Fabric Interconnects

Using the existing reconfigurable network infrastructure of FPGAs we describe reconfigurable interconnection networks, denoted as FLUX networks. That is network where the processing elements, forming a parallel system, has interconnects that are explicitly formed (dynamically) by request using reconfigurable fabric, rather than being fixed. We perform several experiments to show the viability of our approach. More precisely, we present examples where the FLUX networks perform up to 32 times better compared to a rigid fixed interconnect. Furthermore, we show that, based on the data size and the processing element hardware cost, different topologies might be suitable for a single algorithm. The implication of the above is that changing interconnects (dynamically) on demand using reconfigurable fabric could be beneficial