A Coarse-grained Reconfigurable Array Automatically Supporting Loop Iterative Pipeline and Its Configuration Method

Abstract

The invention discloses a coarse-grained reconfigurable array automatically supporting a loop iteration pipeline and a configuration method for the coarse-grained reconfigurable array. A system comprises a pipeline configuration controller, a coarse-grained operator mesh array and a multi-level cache system; the pipeline configuration controller is used for finishing pipeline reconfiguration and iterative control during operation under the control of a configuration code; the mesh array finishes calculation and data exchange of all links in the pipeline according to a definition of a data flow chart under the control of the configuration code; and a pipeline memory performs reading / writing control on variables in the pipeline according to the definition of the data flow chart and finishes data iteration control under the control of the configuration code. The coarse-grained reconfigurable array automatically supporting the loop iteration pipeline and the configuration method for the coarse-grained reconfigurable array have the advantages that numerous pipeline types are supported; the iteration link in the pipeline is directly controlled by adopting hardware; compared with a software pipeline, the loop iteration pipeline has the advantages of short configuration time and low energy consumption; and the pipeline execution speed and the energy efficiency of the coarse-grained reconfigurable array are improved.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to the field of embedded reconfigurable systems, in particular to a coarse-grained reconfigurable array that automatically supports loop iteration pipelines and a configuration method thereof. Background technique [0002] Due to the inclusion of special reconfigurable processing units, reconfigurable arrays maintain application flexibility while gaining performance and power advantages, making them an ideal model for application-specific computing. Reconfigurable arrays have two characteristics in terms of reconfiguration: first, reconfigurable arrays are dynamic reconfigurable types in terms of reconfiguration time; second, reconfigurable arrays are loosely coupled with processors in the system relationship, refactoring is controlled by itself, not by external processors. [0003] Coarse-grained reconfigurable arrays include reconfigurable controllers and reconfigurable data paths. Under the condition of not increasing the siz...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, the configuration bandwidth and data bandwidth of the reconfigurable array are limited by the technology, and the configuration code density is limited by the operator specifications, and the software pipelining method cannot fully utilize the parallel processing capability of the data path of the reconfigurable array.

[0005] To sum up, in the process of implementing the present invention, the applicant found that the existing reconfigurable arrays cannot efficiently handle loop iteration pipeline calculations, thus limiting the performance improvement of reconfigurable arrays

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