Dynamic Prefetching in the Virtual Memory Window of Portable Reconfigurable Coprocessors

Abstract. In Reconfigurable Systems-On-Chip (RSoCs), operating systems can primarily (1) manage the sharing of limited reconfigurable resources, and (2) support communication between reconfigurable accelerators and user applications. It has been shown in previous work that the operating system can dramatically simplify the interface to reconfigurable coprocessors and isolate the programmer from all details of the hardware. A further potential of the operating system is developed here: the operating system can observe accelerators at runtime and dynamically take actions which improve their execution. The strength of involving the operating system consists in achieving better performance without any information from the end user and without changes either in the coprocessor hardware design or in the software application. Specifically, this paper presents an operating system module that monitors reconfigurable coprocessors, predicts their future memory accesses, and performs memory prefet...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: FPL
• Authors: Miljan Vuletic, Laura Pozzi, Paolo Ienne
• Keywords: FPL 2004, Hardware, Limited Reconfigurable Resources, Operating System, Reconfigurable Coprocessors