Describing and Simulating Dynamic Reconfiguration in SystemC

Due to the on-going micro-miniaturisation in chip
production, hardware development has changed from
plain circuit design into the development of complex
heterogeneous systems within the last decade.
Configurable logic devices evolved considerably as
well, but in some branches of the market there is
even more hunger for bigger chips to be filled with
more functionality. This is due to the trend to pack
complete chipsets onto a single platform resulting in
systems-on-chip (SOC) and even complete
networks-on-chip (NOC).
Exploiting the ability to dynamically reconfigure
(i.e. partially change its functionality during
run-time) enables the implementation of systems that
do not fit into the chip completely. The major
obstacle here is that development tools do not
support dynamic reconfiguration conveniently. This
book proposes a methodology for developing and
refining reconfigurable hardware on all abstraction
levels provided by the number one system development
language SystemC.

Autorentext

Andreas Raabe completed his diploma studies in computer scienceat the University of Bonn, where he also received his hisdoctoral degree with distinction (summa cum laude). He iscurrently a post-doctoral fellow at the International ComputerScience Institute Berkeley.

Klappentext

Due to the on-going micro-miniaturisation in chip production, hardware development has changed from plain circuit design into the development of complex heterogeneous systems within the last decade. Configurable logic devices evolved considerably as well, but in some branches of the market there is even more hunger for bigger chips to be filled with more functionality. This is due to the trend to pack complete chipsets onto a single platform resulting in systems-on-chip (SOC) and even complete networks-on-chip (NOC). Exploiting the ability to dynamically reconfigure (i.e. partially change its functionality during run-time) enables the implementation of systems that do not fit into the chip completely. The major obstacle here is that development tools do not support dynamic reconfiguration conveniently. This book proposes a methodology for developing and refining reconfigurable hardware on all abstraction levels provided by the number one system development language SystemC.