Compile- and Run-Time Services for Distributed Hetergeneous Reconfigurable Computing

Achieving seamless portability in reconfigurable hardware designs among vendor-specific FPGA platforms continues to be a nontrivial task. The current reliance on custom hardware wrappers and proprietary software APIs is detrimental to the efficiency of FPGA-accelerated application development. The issues with portability are compounded for distributed applications requiring multiple FPGA platform configurations. To address the problem, the USURP framework provides a standardized compile-time hardware/software interface for the design of write once, run anywhere hardware cores. Previous efforts have concentrated on the challenges of seamlessly porting applications between different RC platforms. In this paper we link the USURP standard to an RC cluster management framework, CARMA, to provide distributed heterogeneous reconfigurable computing services. To demonstrate the power of a distributed RC cluster, three case studies in distributed cryptanalysis are presented.