A programming model for reconfigurable computing based in functional concurrency

Abstract

FPGA programmability remains a concern with respect to the broad adoption of the technology. One reason for this is simple: FPGA applications are frequently implementations of concurrent algorithms that could be most directly rendered in concurrent languages, but there is little or no first-class support for concurrent applications in conventional hardware description languages. It stands to reason that FPGA programmability would be enhanced in a hardware description language with first-class concurrency. The starting point for this paper is a functional hardware description language with built-in support for concurrency called ReWire. Because it is a concurrent functional language, ReWire supports the elegant expression of common concurrency paradigms; we illustrate this with several case studies.