Resource management for dynamically-challenged reconfigurable systems

To conserve space and power, and to incorporate dynamic adaptability in embedded systems, it is important to utilize hardware components as best as possible. The hardware customization of application kernels reduces the execution time and possibly the power consumption. Reconfiguring the same hardware to facilitate various customized kernels as execution proceeds greatly reduces the space requirements. When the kernel execution is carefully scheduled considering also the reconfiguration overheads, the obtained performance gain can offset such overheads. We present our policy and experiments of customizing and reconfiguring actual hardware for embedded benchmark kernels implemented on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The results reveal substantial performance improvement and resource conservation.