Multitasking Support for Dynamically Reconfig Urable Systems

Reconfigurable hardware is often used in an attempt to boost performance of an embedded system while minimizing the cost penalty of additional hardware. The key method applied to achieve this goal is the re-use of hardware resources for different tasks. However, reconfigurable systems tend to have a large internal state, which complicates rapid task switching, as it is required for multitasking in real-time systems, significantly. We present a control technique enabling a fast and efficient preemption of dynamically reconfigurable systems which is largely performed by hardware. The technique handles the problem of internal state preservation and reduces the preemption effort by applying the concept of preemption points. The implementation of the system control and an evaluation of the performance is given, showing the high efficiency of the concept.