Hardware-software co-design for various Parallel applications using the Concept of Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration at FPGA Partitions

Abstract

In this paper an effective hardware design methodology for the devices like mobile phones, digital cameras, etc is described. In those devices only few applications are running at given time. So it requires only few hardware blocks to be active. This design approach is based on the idea of configuring and programming the hardware of active application whenever required at a single Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip. It requires effective hardware-software controller to configured required hardware for active application. In case of multiple applications running in-parallel, it is necessary to configure all the hardware required for these applications to be configured independently. To support this feature, the proposed design methodology introduces the concept of FPGA partitioning to configure these active parallel hardware designs where new designs can be configured at free un-configured partitions using partial configuration without disturbing the hardware of running application. Using this approach single FPGA chip can be configured dynamically for active application(s) only instead of configuring hardware design for all active and in-active applications thereby reducing the overall hardware, cost, size, power consumption and enhancing battery life. This paper explains about redesigning FPGA architecture to introduce FPGA Partitions, Partial & fast programming and Hardware-Software codesign methodology suitable for the devices which are running applications in parallel. D.S.Ravi Kumar Member Technical Staff, VLSI Engineer, Qualcore Logic ltd, Habsiguda, Hyderabad, A.P, India500 007 P. Naveen Kumar Senior Asst. Professor Dept of Electronics & Communication Engg, University College of Engg., Osmania University (A), Hyderabad, A.P., India -500007 The full text of the article is not available in the cache. Kindly refer the IJCA digital library at www.ijcaonline.org for the complete article. In case, you face problems while downloading the full-text, please send a mail to editor at editor@ijcaonline.org