Reconfiguration in FPGA-Based Multi-Core Platforms for Hard Real-Time Applications

In general-purpose computing multi-core platforms, hardware accelerators and reconfiguration are means to improve performance; i.e., the average-case execution time of a software application. In hard real-time systems, such average-case speed-up is not in itself relevant - it is the worst-case execution-time of tasks of an application that determines the systems ability to respond in time. To support this focus, the platform must provide service guarantees for both communication and computation resources. In addition, many hard real-time applications have multiple modes of operation, and each mode has specific requirements. An interesting perspective on reconfigurable computing is to exploit run-time reconfiguration to support mode changes. In this paper we explore approaches to reconfiguration of communication and computation resources in the T-CREST hard real-time multi-core platform. The reconfiguration of communication resources is supported by extending the message-passing network-on-chip with capabilities for setting up, tearing down, and modifying the bandwidth of virtual circuits. The reconfiguration of computation resources, such as hardware accelerators, is performed using the dynamic partial reconfiguration capabilities found in modern FPGAs.