Runtime Reconfigurable Computing - from Embedded to HPC

Today, FPGAs are virtually deployed in any application domain ranging from embedded systems all the way to HPC installations. While FPGAs are commonly used rather statically (basically as ASIC substitutes), this talk will focus on exploiting reprogrammability of FPGAs to improve performance, cost and the energy efficiency of a system.

For embedded systems and future Internet of things systems, it will be demonstrated how tiny FPGA fabrics can replace hardened functional blocks in, for example, an ARM A9 processor. Furthermore, a database acceleration system will be presented that uses runtime reconfiguration of FPGAs to compose query optimized dataflow processing engines. Finally, the talk will introduce the ECOSCALE project that aims at using FPGAs for exascale computing.

Bio

Dirk Koch is a lecturer in the Advanced Processor Technologies Group at the University of Manchester. His main research interest is on runtime reconfigurable systems based on FPGAs, embedded systems, computer architecture and VLSI. Dirk Koch leaded a research project at the University of Oslo, Norway which was targeting to make partial reconfiguration of FPGAs more accessible. Current research projects include database acceleration using FPGAs based on stream processing as well as reconfigurable instruction set extensions for CPUs.

Dirk Koch was a program co-chair of the FPL2012 conference and he is a program committee member of several further conferences including FCCM, FPT, DATE, ISCAS, HEART, SPL, RAW, and ReConFig. He is author of the book "Partial Reconfiguration on FPGAs" and co-editor of "FPGAs For Software Programmers". Dirk holds two patents, and he has (co-)authored 80 conference and journal publications.