Exploiting the HTX-Board as a Coprocessor for Exact Arithmetics
Fabian Nowak, Rainer Buchty, Kramer, David, Wolfgang Karl · heiDOK (Heidelberg University) · 2009
Certain numerical computations benefit from dedicated computation units, e.g. providing increased computation accuracy. Exploiting current interconnection technolo-gies and advances in reconfigurable logic, restrictions and drawbacks of past approaches towards application-specific units can be overcome. This paper presents our implemen-tation of an FPGA-based hardware unit for exact arith-metics. The unit is tightly integrated into the host system us-ing state-of-the-art HyperTransport technology. An accord-ing runtime system provides OS-level support including dy-namic function resolution. The approach demonstrates suit-ability and applicability of the chosen technologies, setting the pace towards broadly acceptable use of reconfigurable coprocessor technology for application-specific computing. 1