A quick safari through the reconfiguration jungle

Cost effective systems use specialization to optimize factors such as power consumption, processing throughput, flexibility or combinations thereof. Reconfigurable systems obtain this specialization at run-time. System reconfiguration has a vertical, a horizontal and a time dimension. We organize this design space as the reconfiguration hierarchy, and discuss the design methods that deal with it. Finally, we survey existing commercial platforms that support reconfiguration and situate them in the reconfiguration jungle.