Field programmable multi chip modules using programmable laser interconnects

Researchers have been performing extensive studies in Multi-FPGA systems for rapid prototyping, logic emulators, reconfigurable computing and software accelerators. Traditional prototyping systems mapped on to multi-FPGA systems have considerable delay and do not reflect the actual timing characteristics of the custom design. An innovative methodology is proposed for prototyping and also for implementation of the design using FPMCM. Two types of FPMCM are used, i.e. SRAM based FPMCM and Laser Vertical Link (LVL) based FPMCMs. These proposed FPMCM systems have better performance characteristics than the conventional multi-FPGA systems due to the inherent advantages of MCMs over PCB systems coupled with faster programmable interconnects.