Object-Oriented Development for Reconfigurable Architectures

Reconfigurable hardware architectures have been available now for several years. Yet the application development for such architectures is still a challenging and error-prone task, since the methods, languages, and tools being used for development are inappropriate to handle the complexity of the problem. This thesis introduces a novel approach that tackles the complexity challenge by raising the level of abstraction to system-level and increasing the degree of automation. The approach is centered around the paradigms of object-orientation, platforms, and modeling. An application and all platforms being used for its design, implementation, and deployment are modeled with objects using UML and an action language. The application model is then transformed into an implementation, whereby the transformation is steered by the platform models. In this thesis solutions for the relevant problems behind this approach are discussed. It is shown how UML can be used for complete and precise modeling of applications and platforms. Application development is done at the system-level using a set of well-defined, orthogonal platform models. Thereby the core features of object-orientation - data abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism - are fully supported. Novel algorithms are presented, that allow for an automatic mapping of such application models to the target architecture. Thereby the problems of platform mapping, estimation of implementation characteristics, and synthesis of UML models are discussed. The thesis explores the utilization of platform models for generation of highly optimized implementations in an automatic yet adaptable way. The approach is evaluated by a number of relevant applications. The execution of the generated implementations is supported by a run-time service. This service manages the hardware configurations and objects comprising the application. Moreover, it serves as broker for hardware objects. The efficient management of configurations and objects at run-time is discussed and optimized life cycles for these entities are proposed. Mechanisms are presented that make the approach portable among different physical hardware architectures. Further, this thesis presents UML profiles and example platforms that support system-level design. These extensions are embodied in a novel type of model compiler. The compiler is accompanied by an implementation of the run-time service. Both have been used to evaluate and improve the presented concepts and algorithms