An Approach to a Fully Automated Partial Reconfiguration Design Flow

Abstract

Adoption of partial reconfiguration (PR) in mainstream FPGA system design remains underwhelming primarily due the significant FPGA design expertise that is required. We present an approach to fully automating a design flow that accepts a high level description of a dynamically adaptive application and generates a fully functional, optimised PR design. This tool can determine the most suitable FPGA for a design to meet a given reconfiguration time constraint and makes full use of available resources. The flow targets adaptive systems, where the dynamic behaviour and switching order are not known up front.