Reconfigurable Architectures: from Physical Implementation to Dynamic Behaviour Modelling

This dissertation focuses on the dynamic behavior of the reconfigurable architec-tures. We start with a survey of the existing work with the aim of categorizing the current research and identifying the future trends. The survey discusses the design issues of the reconfigurable architectures, the run-time management strategies and the design methodologies. The second part of our work focuses on the study of commercial FPGAs that support the dynamic partial reconfiguration. This work grants us a better understanding of the limit and the potential of the mainstream commercial FPGA, and justifies the necessity of employing more advanced technologies in order to enable the realization of highly efficient reconfigurable architectures. The third part of our study is carried out on ADRES, a coarse-grained datapath-coupled reconfigurable architecture. The study on ADRES shows that Multi-threading not only is feasible for reconfigurable architectures, but greatly improves the architecture scalability as well. Our concluding study proposes a simulation framework for coprocessor-coupled reconfigurable architectures, namely COSMOS. The COSMOS simulation framework comprises a generic application model and an architecture model, the combination of which captures the dynamic behavior of the reconfigurable ar-chitectures. Our framework is a tool for studying the run-time management strategies and for experimenting the design space exploration of the reconfig-urable architectures, and offers a means of evaluating various other works on a common ground. The study of the reconfigurable architecture has been a puzzling journey. One can immerse himself in the world of infinite possibilities and keep wondering what message is crucial to deliver to the others. My belief is that, at this moment , we should focus more on the run-time management study. With the goal of easing other's work, the COSMOS framework is presented. As fundamental as it is generic, the COSMOS model captures the essence of dynamic reconfig-uration and suggests a realistic view on the all-too-complicated reconfigurable architectures. The thesis consists of a summary report and a collection of chapters based on 3 research papers written during the period 2005–2007, and elsewhere published.ADRES: Multithreading on Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architecture extended version International Journal of Electronics 2007. Accepted viii Acknowledgements Professor Jan Madsen has been a continuous inspiration throughout my Ph.D. study. He sets a great model for me with his generosity, commitment and enthusiasm. Knowing Andreas Kanstein from Freescale is an important event in my life. I appreciate him being there for me during the hard time. Mladen Berekovic and Frank Bouwens made …