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Topic: Configurable computing

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	Reconfigurable computing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The concept of reconfigurable computing has been around since the 1960s, when Gerald Estrin's landmark paper proposed the concept of a computer consisting of a standard processor and an array of “reconfigurable” hardware.
		As their functional blocks are optimized for large computations they will perform these operations more quickly and power efficiently than a smaller set of functional units connected together with some interconnect, this is due to the connecting wires are shorter, meaning less wire capacitance and hence faster and lower power designs.
		Generally, tools for configurable computing systems can be split up in two parts, CAD tools for reconfigurable array and compilation tools for CPU.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Reconfigurable_computing (2266 words)

	Configurable DNA Computing
		Computer scientists, chemists, molecular biologists, physicists and microsystem engineers are working together to produce both a technological platform and theoretical framework for feasible and evolvable molecular computation.
		Computer scientists, chemists, molecular biologists, physicists and microsystem engineers are working together to produce both a technological platform and theoretical framework for an effective use of molecular computation.
		Collaborations are being fostered with the European Molecular Computing Consortium (EMCC), in particular University of Leiden, Holland (Prof.
	www.ercim.org /publication/Ercim_News/enw43/mc_caskill2.html (1153 words)

	Configurable Computing: The Search for the "Sweet Spot" \| RTC Magazine
		The idea of “configurable computing” is simply an extension and a refinement of silicon design to make it more amenable to translating language into action.
		The use of programmable and configurable logic is not confined to high-end processors.
		Having programmable and configurable tools at hand that are easy to modify and evaluate at low cost and low time investment makes it more likely that final designs and, ultimately, end products will be better, less expensive and more appropriate to the task they have to perform.
	www.rtcmagazine.com /home/printthis.php?id=100102 (795 words)

	Jones Seminar (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-21)
		Configurable computing machines (CCMs) are an alternative to the centralized Von Neumann style architectures that dominate the computing industry.
		A typical configurable computer consists of one or more reconfigurable processing elements (PEs), memory modules, and, in some cases, a CPU and/or digital signal processing chip.
		configured prior to runtime for a specific computation and can devote all their resources to that computation.
	www-fp.mcs.anl.gov /division/information/seminars/1998/jones_980511.htm (211 words)

	Configuration Scenarios - Reconfigurable Computing with KressArray
		Configurable computing architectures will never prove good targets for general purpose computing, in part because of the huge investment in special purpose hardware which is designed to support general software structures.
		Configurable computing will never be considered general purpose computing, though it possible that a configurable computing module will be embedded in a commercial general purpose computing system.
		Current configurable computing systems are hand crafted, partly because of the tight dependence on low level CAD tools which are tied to vendor architectures, and partly because of the immaturity of the community.
	xputers.informatik.uni-kl.de /xputer/hicss97.html (5737 words)

	MorphoSys: Reconfigurable Architecture
		During the computation, another reference block and the search area associated with it are loaded into the other set of the frame buffer so that the loading and computing time are overlapped.
		Computation cost: The cost for computing 2-D DCT on an 8x8 block of the image is as follows: 8 cycles for data input, 6 cycles for butterfly, and 12 cycles for both 1-D DCT computations.
		By considering the number of computations that must be carried out for real-time images, it is obvious that a hardware, which provides great computing power, is essential for solving ATR problem.
	www.eng.uci.edu /morphosys/docs/nato_paper.html (6441 words)

	Scientific American: Article: Configurable Computing 6/97
		Computers that modify their hardware circuits as they operate are opening a new era in computer design.
		Ultimately, computing devices may be able to adapt their hardware almost continuously in response to changes in the input data or processing environment.
		Not all computations can be implemented efficiently with today's FPGAs: they are well suited to algorithms composed of bit-level operations, such as pattern matching and integer arithmetic, but they are ill suited to numeric operations, such as high-precision multiplication or floating-point calculations.
	xputers.informatik.uni-kl.de /reconfigurable_computing/villasenor/0697villasenor.html (2609 words)

	Performance and Synthesis Tools for Adaptive Computing
		For configurable computing to be widely used however, programmers must be able to harness its application-specific compute power without herculean design efforts.
		Mappings of algorithm to configurable hardware are primarily done by hand, in a largely ad-hoc manner.
		Configurable computing mandates specialized performance tools because in this domain, their goal is not simply to identify time-consuming portions of the code.
	www.princeton.edu /~mrm/resconf.html (611 words)

	PROJECT SYNOPSIS: Configurable Computing using Wormhole Runtime Reconfiguration (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-21)
		In order to increase computing capacity beyond these physical bounds, new computing paradigms must be developed that make more efficient use of existing manufacturing technologies.
		Configurable Computing Machines (CCMs) are an emerging class of computers that offer promising possibilities for future high-performance computational needs.
		With configurable computing platforms, specific properties of applications, such as parallelism, regularity of computation, and data resolution can be exploited by creating custom operators, pipelines, and interconnection pathways.
	www.ee.vt.edu /~athanas/whrtr (978 words)

	Computer Science and Engineering Department, Washington University in St. Louis - Colloquia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-21)
		Reconfigurable computing systems consist of computing resources that can be structurally reorganized --post manufacture-- as necessary to create highly parallel, high performance applications.
		In contrast to systems organized around a central computing resource (e.g., microprocessor), reconfigurable systems are comprised of a distributed computing fabric that contains thousands of simple programmable functional units interconnected together with programmable routing.
		He is the director of the Configurable Computing Laboratory which he established in 1993 at BYU to study applications, tools and devices for configurable computing.
	www.cse.seas.wustl.edu /ColloquiaEvent.asp?77 (316 words)

	Benchmark
		Benchmarks are portable to any reconfigurable computer as a behavioral Verilog netlist with a single address space (memory-mapped) external interface to an included C driver program.
		ZEUS-3D is a computational fluid dynamics code developed at the Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics (NCSA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) for the simulation of astrophysical phenomena.
		ZEUS-2D is a computational fluid dynamics code developed at the Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics (NCSA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) for astrophysical radiation magetohydrodynamics problems.
	www.hcs.ufl.edu /~grobelny/RCBenchmarks.htm (2352 words)

	FPGAs:
		The concept of Configurable Computing was proposed in the 1960's; the first commercially-available FPGA appeared in 1985.
		The basic components of an FPGA are Configurable Logic Blocks (CLBs) containing Lookup Tables (LUTs) to implement combinational logic (with n inputs into the table, there are 2^n lookup values), Programmable Interconnect Points (PIPs) to create circuit connections within and between logic cells, and Mulitplexers to control input and ouput.
		This setup allows the FPGA to be reconfigured on the fly to address the specific computing needs of the processor; since the reconfiguration speed has increased greatly, on-the-fly reconfiguration is becoming more viable, with the goal of creating a computer that can reorganize its own hardware to adapt to its computing tasks.
	www.cs.umd.edu /class/fall2001/cmsc411/proj01/fpgas (1013 words)

	Re-configurable Computing with FPGAs - Is it promised Jerusalem?
		Re-configurable Computing with FPGAs - Is it promised Jerusalem?
		Re-configurable computing is a general-purpose hardware agent configured to carry out a specific task, but can be reconfigured on-demand to carry out other specific tasks.
		For certain types of computations needing integer or fixed point arithmetic the benefits of FPGAS can be very significant, two orders of magnitude speed improvement compared to using a conventional cluster CPU.
	www.hoise.com /primeur/05/articles/weekly/CL-PR-03-05-1.html (2942 words)

	Reconfigurable Computing Primer - FPGAs, dynamic reconfiguration, configurable computing
		Reconfigurable computing allows system designers to execute more hardware than they have gates to fit, which works especially well when there are parts of the hardware that are occasionally idle.
		The principal benefits of reconfigurable computing are the ability to execute larger hardware designs with fewer gates and to realize the flexibility of a software-based solution while retaining the execution speed of a more traditional, hardware-based approach.
		This has even led us to use the marketing slogan “Obsolescence is Obsolete” because reconfigurable computing enables the addition of new features in the field, allows rapid implementation of new standards and protocols on an as-needed basis, and protects their investment in computing hardware.
	www.netrino.com /Articles/RCPrimer (2938 words)

	Adaptive Computing Systems Benchmarking (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-21)
		This program addresses the benchmarking of configurable computing systems, systems that can be changed in basic computational structure, either statically or dynamically, without adding physical devices.
		In its current realizations, a configurable computing system consists of a set of general-purpose processors augmented with a set of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).
		Five stressmarks, benchmarks which focus on a specific characteristic or property of the configurable computing system's infrastructure (both tools and architecture), are being developed.
	www.htc.honeywell.com /projects/acsbench (503 words)

	CIOL IT Unlimited
		This kind of computing flexibility may sound too good to be true but actually, it is just around the corner.
		Re-configurable computing will revolutionize the development and ongoing support of a diversity of products, such as Internet-enabled devices, military, aerospace, and digital broadcast equipment, and wireless base stations.
		Today, FPGAs can be configured in milliseconds, and according a story entitled Configurable Computing in Scientific American, configuration times are expected to drop as low as 100 microseconds.
	www.ciol.com /content/search/showArticle.asp?arid=33304 (1611 words)

	Improving the Dependability of Embedded Systems Using Configurable Computing Technology
		In this work, strategies for dependability improvement of embedded systems based in configurable computing technology are discussed.
		Some possibilities for dependability improvement introduced by the configurable computing technology, were discussed in this paper.
		An FPGA configuration bitstream generated from a high level language is space consuming, and represents a lower performer circuit when compared to one generated from schematic diagrams or low level languages such as VHDL structural.
	klabs.org /richcontent/Papers/Synopses/bezerra1.htm (579 words)

	ERSA Introduction
		Reconfigurable computing, also known as configurable computing, adaptive computing, and FPGA-based computing, is an emerging technology capable of providing high computational performance on a diversity of applications.
		The research has been focusing on the configuring of hardware to implement a particular algorithm and on the developing of hardware devices that can be efficiently reconfigured for particular applications.
		While the general-purpose computing deals with sequential algorithms, or with concurrent sequential processes, running in a virtual space, the application-specific computing deals with parallel algorithms running in a physical space-time.
	www.scism.sbu.ac.uk /ERA/ersa03/in.html (627 words)

	Configurable Computing Lab -- Acousting Point Source Locator -- Report
		The signal is produced by the Stanford Research signal generator that is kept in Room 367 of the New Engineering Building, and fed into a standard amplified computer speaker.
		This allowed the microphones to be placed approximately twenty centimeters apart, which is convenient given the size of the apparatus.
		In addition the the amplifier noise, the system must be able to filter it's signal from background noise consisting of human speech, recorded music, computer fans and power supplies, and any other ambient noise found in Room 367.
	www.aoe.vt.edu /~lscharf/pcmics2/spr_2000-independent_study_report.html (1727 words)

	The Density Advantage of Configurable Computing (IEEE Computer 2000) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-21)
		The absolute performance achieved by these configurable machines has been impressive---often one to two orders of magnitude greater than processor-based alternatives.
		Configurable computing is one of the fastest, most economical ways to solve problems such as RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adelman) decryption, DNA sequence matching, signal processing, emulation, and cryptographic attacks.
		The author attempts to answer these questions and to see how configurable computing fits into the arsenal of structures used to build general, programmable computing platforms.
	www.cs.caltech.edu /research/ic/abstracts/density_advantage_computer2000.html (159 words)

	Reconfigurable Computing
		Adaptive computing systems consisting of configurable computing components offer significant performance advantages when tailored to the specific computational demands of particular applications, e.g., automatic target recognition (template matching), morphology, sonar beamforming, Infosec (cryptography).
		However, developing programs for execution on configurable computing units (CCUs) is extremely cumbersome, demanding that system software developers also assume the role of hardware designers.
		The absence of general-purpose, high-level programming tools for adaptive computing has prevented this technology from being adopted or even explored by more than a highly specialized and narrow group of users.
	www.isi.edu /~pedro/RC/rc.html (125 words)

	CFP: Configurable Computing Papers for TVLSI Special Section, IEEE Transactions on VLSI System (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-21)
		Hardware-based systems which can be configured (and even reconfigured) are increasingly being employed for high performance, low power applications.
		Many companies and researchers believe that the answer will be configurable or adaptive computing platform.
		Please highlight that the manuscript is being submitted to the special section on "Configurable Computing Design".
	klabs.org /richcontent/conferences/configurable_vlsi_2006.htm (201 words)

	ResearchChannel - Trends in Adaptive Computing
		The idea of changing the architecture of a processor at run-time to suit an application has been around for a long time.
		However, bringing adaptive (aka configurable) computing into the mainstream has been frustratingly difficult.
		Carl Eberling will first cover the history of configurable computing and describe some of the different research directions that have been taken.
	www.researchchannel.org /prog/displayevent.asp?rid=1323 (149 words)

	SOCcentral: BYU JHDL, open source FPGA CAD tools (BYU Configurable Computing Laboratory 124)
		This last issue is important: FPGA-based systems typically operate in tandem with a general-purpose host microprocessor and it is important to simulate the entire system, including the host computer system and its application software in conjunction with the FPGA design to ensure that the entire application works as desired.
		For example, in simulation mode, circuit execution is modeled by a simulator; but in hardware mode, the exact same code should automatically translate into configuration download, data transfer and direct control of the FPGA hardware.
		Circuit configuration is modeled by construction of JHDL objects; reclamation of FPGA hardware is modeled by destruction of the corresponding Java objects.
	www.soccentral.com /results.asp?EntryID=124 (1518 words)

	Reconfigurable Computing at PARL (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-21)
		Reconfigurable Computing (RC) is an area of computer systems architecture that studies the use of reconfigurable logic as a computational device to be used along with other computing structures such as integer ALUs, memory management units, floating-point multipliers, disk controlers, and network interfaces.
		RC is also known as ``Custom Computing Machines'' (CCMs) or just ``Configurable Computing.'' By reconfigurable logic, we are talking about programming the hardware at the gate-level rather than at the machine instruction level.
		The Clemson University Reconfigurable Computing effort is housed in the Parallel Architecture Research Laboratory (PARL).
	www.parl.clemson.edu /rcc (221 words)

	ECEn 325 Syllabus
		Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface by David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1993
		This class is an introductory class in computer architecture and covers the basic concepts of computer design.
		This class will introduce you to computer architecture and reinforce basic digital design principles as you design a 32-bit RISC processor.
	www.ee.byu.edu /class/ee325/ee325.html (508 words)

	Computer Systems Research
		Computer engineers are developing clothes that monitor health (April 2004)
		Researchers are pursuing advances in configurable computing technology and FPGAs, along with related applications, such as secure communications, wireless medical communications, bioinformatics acceleration, high performance/low power VLSI, and e-textiles.
		Researchers are involved with developing theory and technology for wearable computers and large-scale sensor networks using fabrics that have electronics and interconnections woven into them.
	www.ecpe.vt.edu /research/cpsystems.html (199 words)

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