Selected Publications
Stephen Craven, "Structured Approach to Dynamic Computing Application Development", Ph.D. Preliminary Exam, Blacksburg, VA, Oct 2006.
Abstract:
The ability of some configurable logic devices to modify their hardware during operation has long held great potential to increase performance and reduce device cost. However, despite many research projects and a decade of research, the dynamic reconfiguration of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) is still very much an art practiced by few. Previous attempts to automate the many low-level details that complicate Run-Time Reconfigurable (RTR) application development suffer severe limitations. The proposed research describes a comprehensive approach to dynamic hardware development, providing a designer with appropriate models for computation, communication, and reconfiguration integrated with a high-level design environment. In this way, many manual and time consuming tasks associated with partial reconfiguration may be hidden, permitting a designer to focus instead on a design's behavior. The proposed approach frees reconfigurable applications from dependence on an external configuration controller, generating a configuration manager from a high-level description. The proposed design and implementation environment will enable effective benchmarking of the benefits of partial reconfiguration and high level synthesis.
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