Dedicated module access in dynamically reconfigurable systems

Abstract

Modern FPGAs, such as the Xilinx Virtex-II series, offer the feature of partial and dynamic reconfiguration, allowing to load various hardware configurations (i.e., HW modules) during run-time. To enable communication with these modules and for controlling purposes, dedicated access to each module as well as dedicated signals to control the global communication are required. This paper discusses several ways of implementing dedicated signals and addresses the impact on dynamically reconfigurable systems. Two new approaches are introduced, which allow a permanent access to the modules and to the communication infrastructure even during reconfiguration.