Field-programmable custom computing machines - A taxonomy

Abstract

The ability for providing a hardware platform which can be customized on a per-application basis under software control has established Reconfigurable Computing (RC) as a new computing paradigm. A machine employing the RC paradigm is referred to as a Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machine (FCCM). So far, the FCCMs have been classified according to implementation criteria. For the previous classifications do not reveal the entire meaning of the RC paradigm, we propose to classify the FCCMs according to architectural criteria. To analyze the phenomena inside FCCMs, we introduce a formalism based on microcode, in which any custom operation performed by a field-programmed computing facility is executed as a microprogram with two basic stages: SET CONFIGURATION and EXECUTE CUSTOM OPERATION. Based on the SET/EXECUTE formalism, we then propose an architectural-based taxonomy of FCCMs. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002.