An AMBA AHB-based reconfigurable SoC architecture using multiplicity of dedicated flyby DMA blocks

We propose a system-on-chip (SoC) architecture for reconfigurable applications based on the AMBA high-speed bus (AHB). The architecture features multiple low-area flyby DMA blocks for transferring configuration data. Furthermore, the architecture eliminates the use of energy-consuming instructions used in comparable commercial reconfigurable SoCs. The flyby DMA blocks achieve a reduction of up to 98% in the number of gates found in general-purpose DMA controllers. The DMA blocks also achieve the flyby throughput which halves the number of clock cycles used in conventional DMA for data transfer. We also demonstrate the presence of parallel processing which contributes to improved system performance of the proposed architecture over commercial comparatives.

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