Improving Performance of Partial Reconfiguration Using Strategy of Virtual Deletion

In a partially reconfigurable system with online placement algorithm, we try to avoid mapping some redundant tasks by caching modules on the reconfigurable area. This paper proposes an elaborate strategy named virtual deletion and a low cost board- level hardware named recycle cache to accomplish the goal. In our strategy, the record of corresponding module is deleted from placer and indexed in the recycle cache. If the module might be used by following tasks, it can be restored from reconfigurable area by recycle cache immediately, without mapping the module again. Recycle cache can shorten average configuring time of partial reconfiguration without increasing arithmetic complex and placing time of the placer. Compared with large size of local register file which cache context of modules, the recycle cycle is much smaller and cheaper. Simulation results on large random tasks sets have shown that the recycle cache can improve performance of partially reconfigurable system effectively.