ReConfigME: a detailed implementation of an operating system for reconfigurable computing

Reconfigurable computing applications have traditionally had the exclusive use of the field programmable gate array, primarily because the logic densities of the available devices have been relatively similar in size compared to the application. But with the modern FPGA expanding beyond 10 million system gates, and through the use of dynamic reconfiguration, it has become feasible for several applications to share a single high density device. However, developing applications that share a device is difficult as the current design flow assumes the exclusive use of the FPGA resources. As a consequence, the designer must ensure that resources have been allocated for all possible combinations of loaded applications at design time. If the sequence of application loading and unloading is not known in advance, all resource allocation cannot be performed at design time because the availability of resources changes dynamically. In this paper, we present an implementation of an operating system that has the ability to share its FPGA resources dynamically among multiple executing applications.