Building partial systems with GoAhead

Abstract

GOAHEAD is a tool for easily building complex run-time reconfigurable systems. The tool provides sophisticated features like module relocation, hierarchical reconfiguration, or reusing modules among different systems. This demonstration shows 1) how reconfigurable systems can be built using GOAHEAD with only a few mouse clicks. In addition, 2) we will show how a partial module can be compiled all the way to the final bitstream running on an Atlys Spartan-6 FPGA board in one single batch job. The demonstrated system can simultaneously host up to 75 video overlay modules or 10 partially reconfigurable MIPS CPU systems. In the latter case, the CPUs feature reconfigurable custom instruction set extensions, hence demonstrating a hierarchically reconfigurable multi-core system.