Mapping of Massive Data Processing Systems to FPGA Computers Based on Temporal Partitioning and Design Space Exploration

Abstract

High parallelism degree is fundamental for high speed massive data processing systems. Modern FPGA devices can provide such parallelism plus flexibility. However, these devices are still limited by their logic block size, memory size, memory bandwidth and configuration time. Temporal partitioning techniques can be a solution for such problems when FPGAs are used to implement large systems. In this case, the system is split into partitions (called contexts), multiplexed in a FPGA, by using reconfiguration techniques. This approach can increase the effective area for system implementation, allowing increase of parallelism in each task that composes the application. However, the necessary reconfiguration time between contexts can cause performance decrease. A possible solution for this is an intensive parallelism exploration of massive data application to compensate for this overhead and improve global performance. This is true for modern FPGA with relatively high reconfiguration speed. In this work, A reconfigurable computer platform and design space exploration techniques are proposed for mapping of such massive data applications, as image processing, in FPGA devices, depending on the application task scheduling. A library with different hardware implementation for a different parallelism degree is used for better adjustment of space/time for each task. Experiments demonstrate the efficiency of this approach when compared to the optimal mapping reached by exhaustive timing search in the complete design space exploration. A design flow is shown based on library components that implements typical tasks used in the domain of applications.