An Extensible and Portable Tool Suite for Managing Multi-Node FPGA Systems

Abstract

Current trends in Reconfigurable Computing point to an ever-increasing need for logic resources. This has led to the development and deployment of systems consisting of multiple FPGAs. These systems are advancing from scores of FPGAs to hundreds of FPGAs. Programming and administering these kind of systems while maintaining a non-intrusive physical footprint is expected to remain a continuing challenge. Future systems demand lower FPGA configuration and initialization turn-around times while maintaining a high degree of resource availability. Also, support for new configuration methodologies and portability to the latest generations of FPGA platforms is required. This paper describes an improved suite of tools with new features like job scheduling, bit stream management, multiple session control, debugging capabilities and remote access that will enable large scale High Performance Reconfigurable Computing.