A Taxonomy of Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines An Architectural Approach
Mihai Sima, Stamatis Vassiliadis, Sorin Cotöfană · 2007
The ability for providing a hardware platform which can be customized on a per-application basis under software control has established the Reconfig- urable Computing (RC) as a new computing paradigm. A machine employing the RC paradigm is referred to as a Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machine (FCCM). So far the FCCMs have been classified according to implementation cri- teria. In this presentation we propose a new classification of the FCCMs according to architectural criteria. Specifically, to analyze the phenomena inside FCCMs, we introduce a new formalism based on microcode, in which any reconfigurable oper- ation is executed as a microprogrammed sequence with two basic stages: SET ,a nd EXECUTE. We also introduce the concepts of spatial and temporal constructions to describe the structure of set of the reconfigurable units. The SET/EXECUTE formal- ism and the spatial/temporal constructions are the two most important criteria we use in building the taxonomy of field-programmable custom computing machines.