Operating System Support for Difference-Based Partial Hardware Reconfiguration

Difference-based partial reconfiguration, although simpler to use by not needing previous floor-planning, has its utilization encouraged only for small changes due to its unpredictable nature. This paper proposes a mechanism to avoid this problem by saving the system global state. Therefore it doesn't matter how the difference-based partial bitstream will affect the hardware configuration. This way, partially reconfigurable system-on-chip development requires less design effort.