INESC TEC researchers publish paper in international journal

INESC TEC researchers publish paper in international journal

João Canas Ferreira and Nuno Paulino, researchers at INESC TEC’s Telecommunications and Multimedia Unit (UTM), have recently published a paper on reconfigurable processing unit. João Cardoso, also a researcher at INESC TEC, and João Bispo from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), also co-wrote the paper.

25th March 2013

The paper entitled “Transparent Runtime Migration of Loop-Based Traces of Processor Instructions to Reconfigurable Processing Units” was published in the International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing and addresses the transparent acceleration of embedded applications. This acceleration is achieved by automatically switching the execution of critical loops from software to dedicated hardware at execution time. These are capable of executing the same tasks faster. 

The approach proposed by the researchers does not require a source code; instead, the information on the project’s execution is used to create a reconfigurable processing unit. During this execution, this unit is reconfigured to perform the desired critical function. The unit is activated automatically every time the application executes one of the critical tasks.

The paper describes and assesses the results obtained with a fully functional prototype and this constitutes an important step to devise software that adapts automatically to the tasks to be executed.

UTM/INESC TEC, March 2013