Performance modeling of reconfigurable distributed systems based on the opensparc FPGA board and the SIRC communication framework

In this paper we present a model for predicting performance of a distributed, reconfigurable computing cluster using commodity parts, specifically the Digilent OpenSPARC development board, and the SIRC Framework, developed by Microsoft Research. The goal of this work is to assist in determining the feasibility of deploying a similar system for a given problem. This work is aimed a low-budget and introductory projects that wish to leverage commodity hardware. This paper also provides experimental results for a reconfigurable, distributed system simulating various loading configurations.