Reconfigurable computing: its concept and a practical embodiment using newly developed dynamically reconfigurable logic (DRL) LSI

This paper first outlines a broad range of reconfigurable computing research activities from a perspective of system LSI designs. Then, the paper focuses onto dynamically reconfigurable logic (DRL) LSI, a prototype chip that we developed to evaluate the reconfigurable computing concept. Through its ability to exchange hardware contexts quickly, this chip can accelerate media/communication applications with customized hardware configurations, yet maintaining scalability towards varying application sizes.