A Novel Reconfigurable Co-Processor Architecture

Back-end processors have been conventionally used for speeding up of only a specific set of compute intensive functions. Such co-processors are, generally, "hardwired" and cannot be used for a new function. In this paper, we discuss the design considerations and parameters of a general purpose reconfigurable co-processor. We also propose architecture of such a co-processor and discuss its implementation issues. The concept of a reconfigurable co-processor has become feasible because of the availability of static RAM based FPGAs. The key architectural features of our system are: scalable topology, shared memory space between the main processor and co-processor and efficient reconfigurability. A small prototype of the system has been implemented. We have demonstrated a two orders of speedup using our system over pure software solutions for a set of compute intensive applications.