OS Functions for a Distributed FPGA Cluster System
Kojima Akira, Tokunaga Kazuya, Tetsuo Hironaka · ITC-CSCC :International Technical Conference on Circuits Systems, Computers and Communications · 2009
In reconfigurable computer systems that have reconfigurable resources like FPGA, CPLD etc., OS functions will be necessary to improve utilization of the systems. We have been studying OS functions for these reconfigurable systems. Our first target hardware was tightly coupled FPGA cluster using shared bus and it is easy to access reconfigurable resources, but it is difficult to increase the number of resources. Our second target system is distributed FPGA cluster that is connected by network and it is easy to increase the number of reconfigurable resources, but complicated network handling is necessary to communicate between host computer and reconfigurable resources. In this paper, OS functions for the distributed FPGA cluster system are described, which provide communication services and have compatible simple programming interface with the first target hardware.