FIFO communication models in operating systems for reconfigurable computing

Increasing demands upon embedded systems for higher level services like networking, user interfaces and file system management, are driving growth in fully-featured operating systems such as embedded Linux. In reconfigurable system-on-chip (rSoC) design, a critical issue is efficient integration of custom hardware and software resources, where efficiency must be considered in terms of both design time and run time. Process networks communicating via FIFO queues are a powerful model for real time digital system design, especially for data streaming applications such as multimedia devices. FIFOs also form a central part of Unix and Linux interprocess communication (IPC) architectures, where they are more commonly known as pipes. In this paper, we expand on this observation and show how the combination of embedded Linux, reconfigurable system-on-chip, and FIFO communication models provide a compelling platform for efficient design- and run-time implementation of complex, high performance embedded systems.