Ein Betriebssystem fu?r konfigurierbare Hardware

by

This work investigates the possibility of describing a hardware design independent of special hardware. This is realized with the concept of an operating system. The re-use of operating system modules reduces the time of development and also increases the reliability. Additionally, the change of a development platform has no influence on the application algorithm anymore. In order to apply the concept of an operating system special constraints have to be fulfilled by the hardware description language, which is not supported by VHDL. For that reason a structure compiler has been developed. The structure compiler connects the application program with the operating system modules and produces a VHDL program, which can be used to simulate or to program the FPGA with the typical VHDL development tools. In the progress of developing the operating system concept for reconfigurable hardware it was realized that such a concept can only be used in connection with a design methodology for heterogeneous systems. In this work a design methodology based on a declarative language represented as signal flow graph is discussed. The operating system concept for reconfigurable hardware was tested on different FPGA boards. For these cards an operating system was developed. The operating system contains modules for the communication with the PC over different interfaces as well as modules for accessing different exterior peripheries, i.e. memory. Additionally, the integration of processors as part of the configurable hardware within the operating system concept was investigated. For the verification of the structure compiler and the operating system modules some examples have been developed. The operating system concept for configurable hardware was also applied in different projects.