Bitstream Decompression for High Speed FPGA Configuration from Slow Memories

In this paper, we present hardware decompression accelerators for bridging the gap between high speed FPGA configuration interfaces and slow configuration memories. We discuss different compression algorithms suitable for a decompression on FPGAs as well as on CPLDs with respect to the achievable compression ratio, throughput, and hardware overhead. This leads to various decompressor implementations with one capable to decompress at high data rates of up to 400 megabytes per second while only requiring slightly more than a hundred look-up tables. Furthermore, we present a sophisticated configuration bitstream benchmark.