Design of a flexible coprocessor unit
Till Harbaum, D. Meier, M. Prinke, Martina Zitterbart · Proceedings 25th EUROMICRO Conference. Informatics: Theory and Practice for the New Millennium · 1999
Todays FPGA technology allows reconfigurable hardware to be integrated into standard PC hardware. A hardware like this allows for on-the-fly reconfigurable hardware. It is possible to remove and insert complete subsystems just by reinitializing the configurable components. These systems make new demands on software that often can't be fulfilled by the classical device driver concept used in todays operating systems. This paper presents a flexible and on-the-fly reconfigurable hardware subsystem for interworking systems. Furthermore, a software integration for fast and efficient reconfiguration of the hardware is introduced. It provides a flexible integration into a Unix environment.