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TITLE: Reconfigurable Systems Will Emerge
Mobile Systems
Contributed by Nick Tredennick, Gilder Technology Report
Application emphasis is shifting from tethered systems to mobile
systems. This shift changes the design goal from cost-performance
to cost-performance-per-watt. The microprocessor was well suited
to cost-performance applications, but it is not efficient enough
to be the workhorse in mobile systems. The answer will be
reconfigurable systems, with the microprocessor moving to the
role of supervisor controlling dynamically configured resources
that adapt efficiently to computational tasks.
For thirty years, the microprocessor has been the workhorse in
digital systems. The microprocessor market has grown from nothing
to billions of units per year. But the general-purpose
microprocessor is reaching the end of its road. Voltage, which is
lowered to control power use, is approaching limits at which the
microprocessor's transistors will quit working. Further, as
transistors shrink they become faster, but they also leak more.
Leakage power is approaching active power for many chip designs.
That's important as applications shift to mobile systems because
these systems typically want long standby times interspersed with
short periods of activity. Many reconfigurable systems failed
because they attempted to change design methods. One legacy of
the microprocessor's success is that problem-solving is
programming. Reconfigurable systems that redefine standard
programming languages or that require logic design skills will
fail or will have only limited success.
Attempts to improve the microprocessor's application efficiency
led to design-time configurable microprocessors, but their
creation requires logic designers. The next step in this process
is run-time configurable microprocessors. Such microprocessors
offer advantages similar to design-time configurable
microprocessors, but do not require logic designers. These
microprocessors are generic and can be manufactured in high
volume at low cost and customized in the field.
Design-time and run-time configurable microprocessors are more
efficient than general-purpose microprocessors because they
replace performance-critical sections of a program with custom
instructions that employ application-specific execution units.
These configurable microprocessors speed only critical sections
of the program and each custom implementation works for only a
narrow range of applications. But their success will offer the
proof-of-concept demonstration that reconfigurable systems can
deliver more efficient implementations.
Automotive Market
Contributed by John Watson, Element CXI
As the electronics market turns from industrial to consumer
markets, many companies believe one of the largest growth areas
is the automotive market where there is a captive customer, the
desire for built-in functionality, a bundled sales process and
broad customer interest. However, counter to consumer markets,
long automobile design and test cycle times have made predicting
which cellular standards, frequencies, networking,
audio/video/3D/digital radio/television features and
specifications to include an impossible problem. Yet the
electronic industry builds only rigid, unmodifiable embedded SOC
solutions with no ability to service or easily add improvements.
The solution starts by realizing that for most of the time, most
automobile electronics sit unused. For example, the seats,
windows and mirror electronic systems are seldom used, but the
hardware for these tasks is always available. The same is true
for other electronics in today's automobiles. Obviously, if the
hardware that isn't needed now but will be needed sometime in the
future could be removed until it is needed, then less hardware
would be necessary. A new breed of IC is needed which is
capable of modifying its internal hardware structures to map
itself to the problem at hand and then change itself for the
next application. However, this modification should be
accomplished not by running many software instructions
through an ALU, but by quickly building very explicit
hardware. The increased efficiency of directly creating a
hardware solution can meet the much more complex requirements
of wireless communications, infrared warning systems, and
others, but still keep the flexibility provided through
software.
Another part of the solution is to build this new kind of IC out
of "lego-like" building blocks; so that if one building block
develops a defect, it can be replaced by another like block and
the system continues to work. This overlapping-in-time reuse of
hardware, and the utilization of a small number of elemental
building blocks that are interchangeable with each other means
future automotive systems can be created that are very
inexpensive, easily adapted during the design, manufacture, test
and delivery of a vehicle to provide new functionality, and
extremely reliable.
2005 Conference on Reconfigurable Systems (ERSA)
Contributed by Toomas Plaks, London South Bank University
This conference, which will be held in Las Vegas during June 27-
30, 2005, will address the topics discussed above. The meeting
will focus on the different approaches in engineering of
reconfigurable systems and implementing of algorithms, including
theory, architecture, algorithms, design systems and
applications.
For additional information, access: ERSA-2005
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FILENUMBER: 1181
BEGIN_KEYWORDS
Reconfigurable Systems
END_KEYWORDS
DATE: September 2004
TITLE: Reconfigurable Systems Will Emerge
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