Reconfigurable Systems

The BWRC reconfigurable systems project is concerned with the design, application, and dissemination of FPGA-based computing systems. These activities include hardware system design with a major focus on using commercial off-the-shelf technologies, but also extend to design of novel computing fabrics. A particularly challenging problem in the successful application of these systems is in providing a convenient programming model and associated mapping and support tools. This challenge has been a major emphasis of this research. Reconfigurable computing platforms have evolved to be an indispensable part of the research infrastructure at BWRC. They help support the other activities of the center and have stimulated and enabled research that would otherwise not have been possible.

Three generations of the Berkeley Emulation Engine (BEE), a modular, scalable FPGA-based computing platform with several software design methodologies have been designed. They target a wide range of high-performance applications, such as: cognitive radio testbeds, novel communication algorithm and chip simulation, electronic circuit simulation, emulation of future manycore computer architectures, real-time radio telescope signal processing, and bioinformatics.