Ye, Andy (Ryerson University)

Purpose

The goal of this research is to reduce the power consumption of FPGAs to the level of the lowest power consuming processors through the use of run-time reconfiguration. Run-time reconfiguration, the ability of an FPGA to change its functionality while under operation, has been successfully used in many commercial FPGAs to expand the logic capacity of FPGAs to beyond what can be manufactured by current silicon process technologies. For portable devices with limited battery power, however, the logic capacity of an FPGA is not limited by current process technologies but by the low power output of small batteries. Run-time reconfiguration potentially can allow FPGAs to gracefully trade performance for reduced power consumption in order to bring the power consumption of current low power FPGAs to the level of the lowest power consuming processors.