Resource-Aware Multi-Layer Floorplanning for Partially Reconfigurable FPGAs

Nan LIU  Song CHEN  Takeshi YOSHIMURA  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics   Vol.E96-C   No.4   pp.501-510
Publication Date: 2013/04/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1353
DOI: 10.1587/transele.E96.C.501
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Solid-State Circuit Design—Architecture, Circuit, Device and Design Methodology)
Category: 
Keyword: 
resource-aware,  multi-layer floorlanning,  reconfigurable,  

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Summary: 
Modern field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with heterogeneous resources are partially reconfigurable. Existing methods of reconfiguration-aware floorplanning have limitations with regard to homogeneous resources; they solve only a part of the reconfigurable problem. In this paper, first, a precise model for partially reconfigurable FPGAs is formulated, and then, a two-phase floorplanning approach is presented. In the proposed approach, resource distribution is taken into consideration at all times. In the first step, a resource-aware insertion-after-remove perturbation is devised on the basis of the multi-layer sequence pair constraint graphs, and resource-aware slack-based moves (RASBM) are made to satisfy resource requirements. In the second step, a resource-aware fixed-outline floorplanner is used, and RASBM are applied to pack the reconfigurable regions on the FPGAs. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is resource- and reconfiguration-aware, and facilitates stable floorplanning. In addition, it reduces the wire-length by 4–28% in the first step, and by 12% on average in the second step compared to the wire-length in previous approaches.