A Retargetable Compilation Framework for Heterogeneous Reconfigurable Computing

Abstract

The future trend in microprocessors for the more advanced embedded systems is focusing on massively parallel reconfigurable architectures, consisting of heterogeneous ensembles of hundreds of processing elements communicating over a reconfigurable interconnection network. However, the mastering of low-level microarchitectural details involved in the programming of such massively parallel platforms becomes too cumbersome, which limits their adoption in many applications. Thus, there is a dire need for an approach to produce high-performance scalable implementations that harness the computational resources of the emerging reconfigurable platforms. This article addresses the grand challenge of accessibility of these diverse reconfigurable platforms by suggesting the use of a high-level language, occam-pi, and developing a complete design flow for building, compiling, and generating machine code for heterogeneous coarse-grained hardware. We have evaluated the approach by implementing complex industrial case studies and three common signal processing algorithms. The results of the implemented case studies suggest that the occam-pi language-based approach, because of its well-defined semantics for expressing concurrency and reconfigurability, simplifies the development of applications employing runtime reconfigurable devices. The associated compiler framework ensures portability as well as the performance benefits across heterogeneous platforms.