A New Approach of Hardware Context-Switch for Dynamic Partial Self-Reconfigurable Systems

• Main Authors: Yang-Kun Huang, 黃湧焜
• Other Authors: Trong-Yen Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/pef52c

碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 電腦與通訊研究所 === 96 === Nowadays, hardware module in field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) can be reconfigured dynamically and partially. By using dynamic partial self-reconfigurable system, it maybe can share hardware contexts between various hardware tasks. However, it maybe consume a lot of unnecessary reading time while storing hardware-context, setting instructions are complex in readback function. Addressing these problems, we propose a new approach of hardware context-switch for Xilinx Virtex-II FPGA system. The method can reduce the number of operation commands and the reconfiguration time of hardware context-switch by analyzing the characteristic between bit indexes and frame addresses. The proposed method uses a microprocessor to control ICAP (Internal configuration access port) interface. Three designing examples, Up-counter, LED con-trol display and N-bit divder are demonstrated for verifying the accuracy and perform-ance of proposed method. Experimental results show that our proposed method have 25.6% less reading time of frame, 3.8% less hardware reconfiguration time and 38.2% less readback command setting time on saving hardware context.