RoMultiC: fast and simple configuration data multicasting scheme for coarse grain reconfigurable devices

A novel configuration method called row multicast configuration (RoMultiC) is proposed for high speed configuration of coarse grain reconfigurable systems. The same configuration data can be transferred in multicast fashion to configure many processing elements (PEs) by using multicast bit-map provided in row and column direction of PE array. Evaluation results using practical applications show that a model reconfigurable system that incorporates this scheme can reduce configuration clock cycles up to 73.1% compared with traditional configuration delivery scheme. Amount of required memory to store the configuration data at external memory is also reduced by omitting the duplicated configuration data