A novel approach based on dynamic reconfiguration for process controls with FPGA

A demonstrative application of dynamically reconfigurable FPGA (D/spl I.bar/FPGA) is presented along with a dedicated novel design methodology and software tools which has been developed in the framework of a European Community funded project (RECONF). The application being developed consists in the re-design, by using a D/spl I.bar/FPGA, with an embedded microcontroller, of the control electronics of a scientific space experiment module initially based on a one time programming (OTP) FPGA. The demo application aims to demonstrate the benefit achieved from the design of complex systems based on the dynamic reconfiguration of SRAM based FPGA. Adopting a D/spl I.bar/FPGA approach we expect a performance improvement in terms of silicon area, power reduction and a decrease of the development time/costs.