Analytical performance model for FPGA-based reconfigurable computing

Abstract

Traditionally, FPGA designers make use of CAD tools for evaluating architectures in terms of the area, delay and power. Recently, analytical methods have been proposed to optimize the architectures faster and easier. A complete analytical power, area and delay model have received little attention to date. In addition, previous works use analytical methods to optimize general-purpose FPGA architectures. Using analytical models for optimizing application-specific FPGA architectures are interesting subjects in the reconfigurable computing field. In this way, designers can investigate the optimized architecture for a set of application circuits and the consumers can find their best architecture among a variety of devices which is optimal for their specific work. In this paper, we complete an analytical FPGA performance model by presenting an analytical model to estimate the dynamic and leakage power and by integrating it into the geometric programming framework. This way, we are able to rapidly analyze various FPGA architectures and select the best one in terms of power consumption as well as area and delay. In the next step, we extend the model for optimizing FPGA architectures for a set of applications. A case of the best architecture for two specific circuits has been investigated in this paper.