End-to-end Bitstreams Repository Hierarchy for FPGA Partially Reconfigurable Systems

Abstract This chapter presents an end-to-end hierarchy of bitstreams repository for FPGA-based networked and partially reconfigurable systems. This approach tar-gets embbeded systems with very scare hardware resources taking advantage of dy-namic, specific and optimized architectures. The hierarchy is based on three specific levels: FPGA local repository, local network repository and wide network reposi-tory. It allows the download of partial bitstreams depending on FPGA embedded resources and gives access to local or remote servers when a complete portfolio of bitstreams is needed. Based on real implementations and measurements, results show that the proposal is functional, use a very little of hardware and software mem-ory, and exhibits a download and reconfiguration time faster than state of the art solutions.