Software Environment for WASMII: a Data Driven Machine with a Virtual Hardware

A data driven computer WASMII which exploits dynamically reconfigurable FPGAs based on a virtual hardware has been developed. This paper presents a software system which automatically generates a configuration data for FPGAs used in the WASMII. In this system, an application program is edited as a dataflow graph with a user interface, and divided into a set of subgraphs each of them is corresponding to the configuration data of an FPGA chip. These subgraphs are translated into program modules described in a hardware description language called the SFL. From the SFL programs, a logic synthesis tool PARTHENON generates a net-list of logic circuits for the subgraphs. Finally, the net-list is translated again for the Xiliux's CAD system, and the configuration data is generated. Here, the ordinary differential equation solver is presented as an example, and the number of gates is evaluated.

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