Building up a course in reconfigurable computing

Abstract

The last decade has experienced an increase interest on reconfigurable computing (RC). This evolution was boosted by FPGA which have grown from simple glue logic elements to complex devices able to implement several complex hardware applications and be partially and dynamically reconfigured at run-time. Despite the high number of courses offered in the last years in reconfigurable computing, we could not find a course covering all aspects of reconfiguration. The large majority of reconfigurable computing courses are limited to FPGA programming. This is in part due to the fact that no textbook actually exists in this area. In this paper, we present our experience in providing a course in RC from the scratch. Our goal in designing this course is to provide a strong theoretically and practical background to students by covering all aspects of RC as usually reflected in conferences and industry.