Run-time management of dynamically reconfigurable designs

Abstract

A method for managing reconfigurable designs, which supports run-time configuration transformation, is proposed. This method involves structuring the reconfiguration manager into three components: a monitor, a loader, and a configuration store. Various trade-offs can be achieved in reconfiguration time, the optimality of the reconfigured circuits, and the complexity of the reconfiguration manager. We consider methods of reconfiguration and ways of exploiting run-time information available at compile time, and study their impact on design trade-offs. The proposed techniques, implementable in hardware or software, are supported by our tools and can be applied to both partially and non-partially reconfigurable devices. We describe the combined and the partitioned reconfiguration methods, and use them to illustrate the techniques and the associated trade-offs.