Configuration Caching Management Techniques for Reconfigurable Computing

Although run-time reconfigurable systems have been shown to achieve very high performance, the speedups over traditional microprocessor systems are limited by the cost of configuration of the hardware. In this paper, we explore the idea of configuration caching, and create some of the first cache management algorithms for reconfigurable systems. We present techniques to carefully manage the configurations present on the reconfigurable hardware throughout program execution. Through the use of the presented strategies, we show that the number of required reconfigurations is reduced, lowering the configuration overhead. We extend these techniques to a number of different FPGA programming models, and develop both lower bound and realistic caching algorithms for these structures. Our simulation results show about a factor of 5 overhead reduction can be achieved over the commercial FPGA structures.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: FCCM
• Authors: Zhiyuan Li, Katherine Compton, Scott Hauck
• Keywords: FCCM 2000, Reconfigurable Systems, Run-time Reconfigurable Systems, Traditional Microprocessor Systems, VLSI