REPLICA2Pro: task relocation by bitstream manipulation in virtex-II/Pro FPGAs

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.

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