Software technologies for reconfigurable systems

FPGA-based systems are a significant area of computing, providing a high-performance implementation substrate for many different applications. However, the key to harnessing their power for most domains is developing mapping tools for automatically transforming a circuit or algorithm into a configuration for the system. In this paper we review the current state-of-the-art in mapping tools for FPGA-based systems, including single-chip and multi-chip mapping algorithms for FPGAs, software support for reconfigurable computing, and tools for run-time reconfigurability. We also discuss the challenges for the future, pointing out where development is still needed to let reconfigurable systems achieve all of their promise. Reconfigurable computing is becoming a powerful methodology for achieving high-performance implementations of many applications. By mapping applications into FPGA hardware resources, extremely efficient computations can be performed. In [Hauck98] we presented numerous reconfigurable systems, and described the varied roles of these systems. However, hardware is only one part of a complete system. In order for multi-FPGA systems t