Self-Aware Adaptation in FPGA-based Systems

Self-Aware Adaptive computing systems are capable of adapting their behavior and resources thousands of times based on changing environmental conditions and demands. This allows them to automatically find the best way to accomplish a given goal with the resources at hand. This capability would benefit the full range of computer systems, from embedded devices to servers to supercomputers. Although such a system may seem rather far fetched, we believe that basic semiconductor technology, computer architecture and software systems have advanced to the point that the time is ripe to realize such a system. In this paper we present an implementation of an FPGA-based Self-Aware Adaptive computing system which blends techniques developed in different research fields, i.e, monitoring, decision making, and self-adaptation. The result is a system built on top of a set of enabling technology that proves the effectiveness of using Self-Aware Adaptive computing systems. We used the Application Heartbeats to assess performance goals and to inspect application progress and the Implementation Switch Service to switch between different implementations of the same algorithm (both in software and in hardware) at runtime. Preliminary results show the effectiveness and the usability of the proposed approach.