System for Running Replicating Non-deterministic Finite Automata Using Partial Reconfiguration

Abstract

Partial reconfiguration has many practical applications, and is an increasingly important requirement for many user markets. The cloning non-deterministic state machine can be used as fundamental design when specifying, designing and verifying systems that are reconfigurable. Earlier work done at NTNU has produced a designs for the Virtex-4 FPGA, but the FPGA was too small for this application, only fitting one reconfigurable partition. The work done in this thesis is implementing and verifying the design on the Virtex-6 FPGA. The increased size of the Virtex-6 over the Virtex-4 has made it possible to construct the design with multiple reconfigurable partitions. Using the MicroBlaze processor and the PetaLinux Linux Kernel, the designed was run using sixteen partitions, actively managing non-deterministic state machines using partial reconfiguration.