Pipeline Reconfigurable FPGAs

  • Authors:
  • Herman H. Schmit;Srihari Cadambi;Matthew Moe;Seth C. Goldstein

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA;Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of VLSI Signal Processing Systems - Special issue on VLSI on custom computing technology
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

While reconfigurable computing promises to deliverincomparable performance, it is still a marginal technology due tothe high cost of developing and upgrading applications. Hardwarevirtualization can be used to significantly reduce both these costs.In this paper we describe the benefits of hardware virtualization,and show how it can be achieved using the technique of pipelinereconfiguration. The result is PipeRench, an architecture thatsupports robust compilation and provides forward compatibility. Ourpreliminary performance analysis on PipeRench predicts that it willoutperform commercial FPGAs and DSPs in both overall performance andin performance normalized for silicon area over a broad range ofproblem sizes.