Reconfigurable General-purpose Processor Idea Overview

This paper presents the idea of the reconfigurable general-purpose processor implemented as dynamically reconfigurable FPGA (called “reconfigurable processor” in the rest of this document). Proposed solution is compared with currently available general-purpose processors performing instructions sequentially (called “sequential processors” in the rest of this paper). This document presents the idea of such reconfigurable processor and its operation without going into implementation details and technological limitations. The main novelty of reconfigurable processor lays in lack of typical for other processors sequential execution of instructions. All operations (if only possible) are executed in parallel, in hardware also at subistruction level. Solution proposed in this paper should give speed up and lower power consumption in comparison with other processors currently available. Additionally proposed architecture does not requires neither any modifications in source codes of already existing, portable programs nor any changes in development process. All of the changes can be performed by compiler at the stage of compilation