Generic Systolic Array for Run-time Scalable Cores

Abstract

This paper presents a scalable core architecture based on a generic systolic array. The size of this kind of cores can be adapted in real-time to cover changing application requirements or to the available area in a reconfigurable device. In this paper, the process of scaling the core is performed by the replication of a single processing element using run-time partial reconfiguration. Furthermore, rather than restricting the proposed solution to a given application, it is based on a generic systolic architecture which is adapted using a design flow which is also proposed. The paper includes a related work discussion, the proposal and definition of a systolic array communication approach, which does not require the use of specific macro structures and permits to achieve higher flexibility, and a design flow used to adapt the generic architecture. Further, the paper also includes an image filter application as a simple use case, along with implementation results for Virtex 5 FPGA.