Research Summary

Processor based embedded systems are the popular form of implementation for many signal processing applications. In such systems, the processor is the main component. For such systems, processors need to have certain charateristics (constraints). These characteristics aid in the efficient design of such processors. Based on such charteristics, many state of the art processors exist in the current technology.

But, with the development of FPGAs, new breed of processors are being investigated called Reconfigurable Processors , some for general purpose applications and some for specific application domain. Currently I am investigating one such processor among that breed, called Reconfigurable Instruction Set Processor for MPEG-4 like application domain.

What are Reconfigurable Processors?
If a processor (RISC/CISC) is coupled with a FPGA kind of logic(also called Reconfigurable Logic), then its called a reconfigurable processor. Depending on the place of coupling, the logic has certain behaviour. Like for eg,

What are Reconfigurable Instruction Set Processors(RISP)?
A processor is usually designed based on an Instruction Set. An instruction Set says, what are all the basic operations the processor is capable of doing. In all non reconfigurable processors, this set is fixed when the processor is designed. But in the RISP, at design time, the processor has

The undefined instructions are later defined at compile time, and these definitions could vary from one application to another. The functionalites of these instructions are usually made to run on the reconfigurable logic which is present in the processor as a functional unit. Reconfigurable instruction set processors are a sub-class of Reconfigurable Architectures.

What are Reconfigurable Architectures?
Traditionally, an architecture is defined as

But, due to the recent developments in the processors (eg: VLIW) and the compilers, it is difficult (almost impossible) to write a program manually. So, without loosing the essence of the original definition, the new definition of an architecture is as follows. With this definition of the architecture in mind, a Reconfigurable Architecture is definied as Examples
Presentations
A comprehensive link, covering different research groups around the world working on computer architectures.
Some Links to interesting groups, who are working on the Reconfigurable Architectures Some links to the Industry which is related to my work