A communication scheduling algorithm for multi-FPGA systems

For multiple FPGA systems, the limited number of I/O pins causes many problems. To solve these problems, efficient communication scheduling among FPGAs is crucial for obtaining high CLB utilization. We provide a heuristic for the NP-complete scheduling algorithm. Experimental results show that our algorithm generates excellent communication schedules: more than 90% of the randomly generated problem instances were scheduled with less than 20% overhead compared with an optimal algorithm. The execution time of the scheduling algorithm is two orders of magnitude less than the optimal scheduling algorithm.