Dynamically reconfigurable FPGA prototyping platform for hardware/software co-design

Abstract

In this diploma thesis, the benefits and drawbacks of dynamically reconfigurable systems were investigated. Within the thesis work, a prototyping platform for dynamically reconfigurable systems was designed and implemented. This prototyping platform is the first of its kind for the used FPGA circuit and its abilities are at least equal to prototyping platforms developed to other FPGAs. When this prototyping platform was designed, a special attention was taken to achieve greater flexibility and versatile input and output properties. These aspects are usually neglected in commercial systems. Furthermore, this prototyping platform was designed to meet IEEE's PMC standard. Therefore it can function as accelerator card in personal computer or as mezzanine card in advanced digital signal processing development environments. Most of existing prototyping environments are designed to be used only in personal computers.Conclusions of this work were that dynamically reconfigurable architectures are very suitable for modern digital signal processing tasks, where both flexibility of a software and efficiency of hardware are needed. /Kir10