Title
Clock speed optimization of runtime reconfigurable systems by signal latency measurement
Abstract
Partial runtime reconfiguration is a feature of modern Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). It allows the reconfiguration of some parts of the FPGA, while other parts are still running and doing computations. The design flow to create a partially run-time reconfigurable system includes the partitioning of a FPGA into multiple collaborating Reconfigurable Modules (RMs), as part of the floor-planning design stage, and the development of an interconnection network. The latency of the chosen interconnection network determines the maximum clock speed the components inside the RMs can run at. The customary way of choosing design constraints to achieve the highest possible speed can lead to very long placement and routing times or even to an un-routable design. Eventually, the the Time To Market (TTM) of a product can be inreased. This paper proposes measuring the latencies of the interconnection network after a relaxed configuration phase. This is achieved by configuring two different kinds of components into the RMs and measure the round trip time of the network between them. Thus, the best placement of reconfigurable components, as well as the maximum clock rate of a given configuration can be calculated, and set without the need to rebuild the system. This enables the developer to place components into the RMs according to their clock speed requirements, without the need to reconfigure or rebuild the full system. This paper also presents some example measurements and an example placement of a small microcontroller.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1109/IECON.2015.7392159
IECON 2015 - 41st Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
Keywords
Field
DocType
clock speed optimization,runtime reconfigurable systems,signal latency measurement,interconnection network,relaxed configuration phase,reconfigurable modules,round trip time,maximum clock rate,microcontroller,FPGA
Propagation delay,Field-programmable gate array,Design flow,Microcontroller,Engineering,Interconnection,Time to market,Control reconfiguration,Clock rate,Embedded system
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
1553-572X
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Dominik Meyer141.87
Haase, J.266.13
Marcel Eckert332.55
Bernd Klauer45014.36