The Multi-Dataflow Composer tool: A runtime reconfigurable HDL platform composer

Abstract

Dataflow Model of Computation (D-MoC) is particularly suitable to close the gap between hardware architects and software developers. Leveraging on the combination of the D-MoC with a coarse-grained reconfigurable approach to hardware design, we propose a tool, the Multi-Dataflow Composer (MDC) tool, able to improve time-to-market of modern complex multi-purpose systems by allowing the derivation of HDL runtime reconfigurable platforms starting from the D-MoC models of the targeted set of applications. MDC tool has proven to provide a considerable on-chip area saving: the 82% of saving has been reached combining of different applications in the image processing domain, adopting a 90 nm CMOS technology. In future the MDC tool, with a very small integration effort, will also be extremely useful to create multi-standard codec platforms for MPEG RVC applications.