IEICE Transactions on Electronics
Online ISSN : 1745-1353
Print ISSN : 0916-8524
Special Section on Advanced Technologies in Digital LSIs and Memories
Multi-Context FPGA Using Fine-Grained Interconnection Blocks and Its CAD Environment
Hasitha Muthumala WAIDYASOORIYAWeisheng CHONGMasanori HARIYAMAMichitaka KAMEYAMA
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2008 Volume E91.C Issue 4 Pages 517-525

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Abstract

Dynamically-programmable gate arrays (DPGAs) promise lower-cost implementations than conventional field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) since they efficiently reuse limited hardware resources in time. One of the typical DPGA architectures is a multi-context FPGA (MC-FPGA) that requires multiple memory bits per configuration bit to realize fast context switching. However, this additional memory bits cause significant overhead in area and power consumption. This paper presents novel architecture of a switch element to overcome the required capacity of configuration memory. Our main idea is to exploit redundancy between different contexts by using a fine-grained switch element. The proposed MC-FPGA is designed in a 0.18μm CMOS technology. Its maximum clock frequency and the context switching frequency are measured to be 310MHz and 272MHz, respectively. Moreover, novel CAD process that exploits the redundancy in configuration data, is proposed to support the MC-FPGA architecture.

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© 2008 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers
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