A survey of reconfigurable architectures

Abstract

A new architecture type that is recently evolving is the reconfigurable architecture which combines the benefits of ASIPs (Application Specific Instruction Set Processors) and FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). Reconfigurable computing combines software flexibility with high performance hardware. FPGAs are generally employed to construct a reconfigurable block as it provides an instant time-to-market advantage. Reconfigurable devices like FPGA offers improved computational efficiency as compared to traditional processor architectures. Reconfigurable block in these architectures provides the required flexibility for a large variety of embedded applications. Design space exploration of reconfigurable block involves a wide range of alternatives like logic block granularity in FPGA, interconnect topology, etc. The goal of this paper is to explore the reconfigurable architectures.