SPECIAL SECTION ON FIELD PROGRAMMABLE LOGIC AND APPLICATIONS - Server-based execution of periodic tasks on dynamically reconfigurable hardware

A prototype system that executes a set of periodic real-time tasks utilising dynamic hardware reconfiguration is presented. The proposed scheduling technique, merge server distribute load (MSDL), is not only able to give an offline guarantee for the feasibility of the task set, but also minimises the number of device configurations. After describing this technique, the schedulability analysis is extended to cover different runtime system overheads, including the device reconfiguration time. Then, a light-weight runtime system that performs the online part of the MSDL scheduling technique is detailed. The runtime system is implemented entirely in hardware. Finally, the corresponding synthesis tool flow is outlined and the overhead posed by the runtime system is reported.