Elementary block based 2-dimensional dynamic and partial reconfiguration for Virtex-II FPGAs

The development of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) had tremendous improvements in the last few years. They were extended from simple logic circuits to complex systems-on-chip which enable the integration of complete microcontroller systems and their peripheral devices. Virtex-II FPGAs from Xilinx provide the possibility of dynamic and partial reconfiguration. This can be taken advantage of to substitute inactive parts of a hardware system and adapt the complete chip to a different requirement of an application while run-time. Existing approaches allow reconfiguration of slot based systems while run-time. Unfortunately such systems suffer from the fact, that fixed sized reconfigurable slots are not completely utilized by all functional blocks. Therefore a new 2-dimensional approach is necessary to optimize the placement of functions on the reconfiguration area for the FPGA. Benefit is a reduced chip size which leads to a reduction of power dissipation. This paper describes the method and procedure to include a 2-dimensional placement of reconfigurable blocks and the integration to a run-time system.