Parallel Implementation of the Shortest Path Algorithm on FPGA

Abstract

An implementation of a parallel version of the shortest path algorithm on a Virtex-II Pro FPGA device that computes the minimal distance in a graph in a more efficiently way than the classical algorithms is presented The paper shows how the hardware/software codesign process is applied in order to design the system using a PowerPC processor running Linux on a XUP Virtex-II Pro development board. The coprocessor's hardware architecture is fully described as well as the software running in Linux that is in charge of transferring data between the host computer, the PPC and the application-specific coprocessor. The synthesis results are presented as well as a comparative study of speedups for the parallel and the sequential implementation of the algorithm, showing a good improvement from the presented version against a software version running in a PC.