Dynamic hardware plugins in an FPGA with partial run-time reconfiguration

  • Authors:
  • Edson L. Horta;John W. Lockwood;David E. Taylor;David Parlour

  • Affiliations:
  • Universidade de San Pãulo, San Pãulo, Brazil;Washington University, Saint Louis, MO;Washington University, Saint Louis, MO;Xilinx, Inc, San Jose, CA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 39th annual Design Automation Conference
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Tools and a design methodology have been developed to support partial run-time reconfiguration of FPGA logic on the Field Programmable Port Extender. High-speed Internet packet processing circuits on this platform are implemented as Dynamic Hardware Plugin (DHP) modules that fit within a specific region of an FPGA device. The PARBIT tool has been developed to transform and restructure bitfiles created by standard computer aided design tools into partial bitsteams that program DHPs. The methodology allows the platform to hot-swap application-specific DHP modules without disturbing the operation of the rest of the system.