Statistical Analysis and Design of HARP FPGAs

Modern field programmable gate array (FPGA) architectures provide ample routing resources so that designs can be routed successfully. The routing architecture is designed to handle versatile connection configurations. However, providing such a great flexibility comes at a high cost in terms of area, delay, and power. The authors propose a new FPGA routing architecture that utilizes a mixture of hardwired and traditional flexible switches. The result is an about a 30% reduction in leakage power consumption, a 5% smaller area, and 20% shorter delays, which translates to a 25% increase in the clock frequency. Despite the increase in clock speeds, the overall power consumption is reduced.