Date of Award:

5-2010

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Aravind Dasu

Committee

Aravind Dasu

Committee

Paul Israelsen

Committee

Fon Brown

Abstract

Reconfigurable computing is an evolving paradigm in computer architecture where the ability to load different designs onto a field programmable gate array (FPGA) at execution time has proven useful in adapting FPGA prototypes to a wide range of applications. Reconfiguration techniques can be primarily categorized as Partial Dynamic Reconfiguration (PDR) and Partial Bitstream Relocation (PBR). PDR involves reconfiguring a single Partial Reconfiguration Region (PRR) with a partial bitstream, while PBR is targeted at reconfiguring multiple PRRs on the FPGA with a partial bitstream. Previous techniques have primarily focused on using either slower off-chip memory or on-chip memory-based solutions to store the partial bitstream, and then reconfigure a PRR on the FPGA. Another technique called Accelerated Relocation Circuit (ARC) provides a more efficient method where a PRR (active bitstream) is used to relocate to other PRRs on the fly using minimal on-chip memory. This thesis proposes a novel technique for Memory-based Frame Data Reconfiguration (M-FDR) of multi-row PRRs. ARC hardware was re-architected to provide an improved frame data reconfiguration framework, called Accelerated Memory-based Reconfiguration Circuit (AMRC) for use in MBR scenarios. A performance prediction model is also proposed that confirms the speedup achieved by AMRC, in comparison to ARC and earlier methods. This technique was found to be 26.6% faster than ARC in PRR-PRR relocation. In comparison to other relocation techniques like Bit Relocation Filter (BiRF), AMRC provides a speedup of 231x. The AMRC method was also able to dynamically parallelize multi-row designs with an average context switching time of 0.37 ms.

Checksum

056fea9755e6f3ca8a91d8ae76afb409

Comments

This work made publicly available electronically on August 2, 2010.

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