Reconfigurable machine and its application to logic diagnosis

It is pointed out that in the reconfigurable machine (RM) highly flexible architecture combining field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with RAMs supports a wide range of applications. Since its gate-level programmability allows implementation of various kinds of parallel processing techniques, RM provides a performance comparable to that of existing special-purpose engines. A reconfigurable machine prototype (RMP) has been built as the first prototype incorporating five FPGA and four SRAM memory banks. RMP has been applied to logic diagnosis and a logic simulator. The concept of RM may be the best solution to the trade-offs between general-purpose and special-purpose machines. RM will be a hardware platform accelerating a wide range of applications, and also offering an interesting problem in high-level synthesis.<>