资 源 简 介
Due to the programmability features, reconfigurable technology offers design flexibility which is supported by quite mature commercial design flows. The epoch of reconfigurable computing started with the traditional FPGAs. Moreover, FPGA architecture characteristics and capabilities changed and improved significantly the last two decades, from a simple homogeneous architecture with logic modules and horizontal and vertical interconnections to FPGA platforms (e.g. Virtex-4 logic family), which include except logic and routing, microprocessors, block RAMs etc. In other words, the FPGA architecture changed gradually from a homogeneous and regular architecture to a heterogeneous (or piece-wise homogeneous) and piecewise regular architecture. The platform-based design allows to designer to build a customized FPGA architecture, using specific blocks, depending on the application domain requirements. The platform-based strategy changed the FPGAs role from a “general-purpose” machine to an “application-domain” machine, closing the gap with ASIC solutions. Furthermore, the need for additional performance through the acceleration of computationally-intensive parts from complex applications can be satisfied by the coarse-gain reconfigurable architectures. In coarse grain reconfigurable hardware some flexibility is traded-off for a potentially higher degree of optimisation in terms of area and power and the ability to reconfigure the platform at a rate, which is significantly faster than the changes of mode observed by a user of the application (not possible in most conventional FPGAs).The book consists of two parts each of which has different goals and audience.In particular, the first part includes two contributions, which provide a very detailed survey of existing fine (or FPGA)- and coarse-grain reconfigurable architectures and software-support design flows both from academia and industry. Both chapters can be considered as tutorial-like chapters. The second part includes five contributions with specific research results from AMDREL project (FPGA architecture), MORPHOSYS, MOLEN, ADRES and DRESC projects (coarse-grain architectures). The last chapter provides a taxonomy of field-programmable custom computing machines with emphasis on microcode formalism.This book is accompanied by a CD, which includes additional material usefulfor the interested reader to go further in the design of FPGA and coarse-gain architectures.In particular, the CD contains, among others, public-domain software toolsand a number of assignments about: (i) theMEANDER design framework for FPGAarchitectures (http://vlsi.ee.duth.gr/amdrel) and (ii) theMOLEN reconfigurable processor and programming paradigm (http://ce.et.tudelft.nl/MOLEN). Moreover, thefirst two chapters about FPGA and coarse-grain reconfigurable architectures andthe solved/unsolved assignments will assist both the instructor to organize somelectures and assignments of semester course about reconfigurable computing, andthe student to get deeper in many concepts of FPGA and course-grain architectures.For instance, a student can design an FPGA architecture with his/her own specifications, employing elementary modules (e.g. flip-flops, LUT), which is not available from the commercial tools.The authors of the book chapters together with the editors would like to use thisopportunity to thank many people, i.e. colleagues, M.Sc. and Ph.D. students, whosededication and industry during the projects execution led to the introduction of novel scientific results and implementation of innovative reconfigurable systems.Dimitrios Soudris would like to thank his parents for being a constant source ofmoral support and for firmly imbibing into him from a very young age that perseverantia omnia vincit – it is this perseverance that kept him going. This book is dedicated to them.We finally hope that the reader (instructor, engineer, student, etc) will find thebook useful and constructive and enjoyable, and that the technical material presented will contribute to the continued progress in the reconfigurable architectures field.
