hardware multitasking

In the article the basic principles of hardware multitasking in the reconfigurable computer systems, based on partially reconfigurable FPGAs, are identified. The structure of the platform to implement hardware multitasking in partially reconfigurable FPGA is proposed. The concept of Virtual Hardware and the questions of the context switch and task relocation in partially reconfigurable FPGA are disclosed.

The FPGA-based accelerators and reconfigurable computer systems based on them require designing the application-specific processor soft-cores and are effective for certain classes of problems only, for which application-specific processor soft-cores were previously developed. In Self-Configurable FPGA-based Computer Systems the problem of designing the application-specific processor soft-cores is solved with use of the C2HDL tools, allowing them to be generated automatically.