Redefining the role of FPGAs in the next generation avionic systems

International audienceEmbedded reconfigurable computing is becoming a new paradigm for system designers in avionic applications. In fact, FPGAs can be used for more than just computational purpose in order to improve the system performance. The introduction of FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) I/O standard has given a new purpose for FPGAs to be used as a communication platform. Taking into account the features offered by FPGAs and FMCs, such as runtime reconfiguration and modularity, we have redefined the role of these devices to be used as a generic communication and computation-centric platform. A new modular, runtime reconfigurable, Intellectual Property (IP)-based communication-centric platform for avionic applications has been designed. This means that, when the communication requirement of an avionic system changes, the necessary communication protocol is installed and executed on demand, without disturbing the normal operation of a time-critical avionic system. The efficiency and the performances of our platform are illustrated through a real industrial use-case designed using a computationally intensive application and several avionic I/O bus standards. The reconfiguration latency can be hidden totally in many cases. While in certain others, the overhead of reconfiguration can be justified by the reduction in the resource utilization