Reconfigurable Computing

A reconfigurable processor is a microprocessor with erasable hardware that can rewire itself dynamically. This allows the chip to adapt effectively to the programming tasks demanded by the particular software they are interfacing with at any given time . This is an emerging field that blurs the traditional boundaries between hardware and software.

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Who will like Reconfigurable Computing ? 

One who enjoys real-time design and applicationsOne with a pioneering spirit to learn more on software and knowledgeable about hardware (or vice versa)One who likes to produce a challenging hardware/software solutions to an application

Why Reconfigurable Hardware?

The one-to-one match of application to a fixed architecture is difficult and we cannot achieve high throughput .Greater functionality can be achieved with a reconfigurable logic

• Lower system cost
• Evaluate in terms of lifetime system costs to determine the savings
• The ability to provide for high fault tolerance in the system
• Reduced time-to-market
• Flexible logic and on-the field reprogrammable

Types of Reconfiguration

• Processor Reconfiguration

Changing the internal hardware capabilities(Data Path- Word size, Pipelining, Communication among Multiple Data Path Units, etc.)

• Communication Reconfiguration

A set of communication channels provided in run-time for a pair of processors

• Control Reconfiguration

Changes the way in which instructions streams are processed on a processor (SIMD, MIMD, MSIMD

• Data Encryption and Decryption -      Encryption and decryption algorithms can be  executed in the most efficient way  

• Computer Virus and Worm Detector -  Strings of malicious code 
• DSP Applications -       High performance low power DSP hardware  ,String pattern matching, data compression 

PROS & CONS OF RECONFIGURABLE COMPUTING 

PROS

1. Higher computation density than CPUs (MIPS/area)
2. More flexible than ASICs: reconfigurable
3. Large and variable level of parallelism

C0NS

1. FPGAs are programmed using Hardware Description Languages (HDLs): Verilog or VHDL
2. Applications programmers do not know (or want to know) HDLs
3. RCS are not accessible where they are needed!
4. Back to overlay programming for reconfiguration

Future

• System-on-a chip (SoC) to gain more logic, performance and low cost and power advantages
• More Use of Parallel Processing techniques and FPGA architectures for both spatial and time domain