Dynamic Defragmentation of Reconfigurable Devices

Abstract

We propose a new method for defragmenting the module layout of a reconfigurable device, enabled by a novel approach for dealing with communication needs between relocated modules and with inhomogeneities found in commonly used FPGAs. Our method is based on dynamic relocation of module positions during runtime, with only very little reconfiguration overhead; the objective is to maximize the length of contiguous free space that is available for new modules. We describe a number of algorithmic aspects of good defragmentation, and present an optimization method based on tabu search. Experimental results indicate that we can improve the quality of module layout by roughly 50% over the static layout. Among other benefits, this improvement avoids unnecessary rejections of modules.

Bibtex

@article{trets12,
        AUTHOR             = {Fekete, S\'{a}ndor P. and Kamphans, Tom and Schweer, Nils and Tessars, Christopher and van der Veen, Jan C. and Angermeier, Josef and Koch, Dirk and Teich, J\"{u}rgen},
        TITLE              = {Dynamic Defragmentation of Reconfigurable Devices},
        journal            = {ACM Transactions Reconfigurable Technology and Systems},
        issue_date         = {June 2012},
        volume             = {5},
        number             = {2},
        month              = jun,
        year               = {2012},
        issn               = {1936-7406},
        pages              = {8:1--8:20},
        numpages           = {20},
        doi                = {10.1145/2209285.2209287},
        publisher          = {ACM},
        address            = {New York, NY, USA}
}