Research on reconfiguration technology based on SOPC for PXI instrument

Abstract

The traditional PXI instrument generally has fixed function and its firmware is difficult to upgrade. To overcome this problem, the reconfigurable PXI instrument is proposed to meet different requirements. The design is implemented by using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) with reconfigurable function. In this paper, in order to satisfy the different vehicle bus test requirements, a reconfigurable serial communication module is designed, and the serial communication interface and protocol of this module can be reconfigured dynamically. The design is based on Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (DPR) which is implemented by the Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA supporting the System on Programmable Chip (SOPC). As a character, online reconfiguration of local and remote is supported. The test results indicate that 5 different protocols are supported. In the meantime, the design is also with the character of real-time. When the configuration data is 167310 Bytes, the time of local reconfiguration is less than 5ms and the remote reconfiguration is accomplished within 70ms.