Methods and Mechanisms for Hardware Multitasking: Executing and Synchronizing Fully Relocatable Hardware Tasks in Xilinx FPGAs

Abstract

This paper presents the details of a novel technique which allows for the implementation and execution of completely relocatable hardware tasks onto dynamically reconfigurable FPGAs. Our novel technique harnesses the internal configuration access port (ICAP) for inter-task communication and synchronization, leading to very little logic overheads. The advantages of this technique include fault-tolerance, as tasks could be relocated freely on the fabric to circumvent damaged resources, and high performance, due to better exploitation of the logic fabric. The work is part of a larger effort in our group which aims to build a fully operational dynamically reconfigurable computer which would satisfy the often conflicting requirements of high performance, fault-tolerance and high level programming.