RAT: a methodology for predicting performance in application design migration to FPGAs

Abstract

Before any application is migrated to a reconfigurable computer (RC), it is important to consider its amenability to the hardware paradigm. In order to maximize the probability of success for an application's migration to an FPGA, one must quickly and with a reasonable degree of accuracy analyze not only the performance of the system but also the required precision and necessary resources to support a particular design. This extra preparation is meant to reduce the risk of failure to achieve the application's design requirements (e.g. speed or area) by quantitatively predicting the expected performance and system utilization. This paper presents the RC Amenability Test (RAT), a methodology for rapidly analyzing an application's design compatibility to a specific FPGA platform.