Title: An abstraction layer enabling pervasive hardware-reconfigurable systems

Authors: Alessandro Cilardo; Nicola Mazzocca; Paolo Prinetto

Addresses: DIETI, University of Naples Federico II, via Claudio 21, 80125 Naples, Italy ' DIETI, University of Naples Federico II, via Claudio 21, 80125 Naples, Italy ' DAUIN, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24, 10129 Torino, Italy

Abstract: Field-programmable gate array technologies are creating a new range of challenges for pervasive and ubiquitous systems. Revisiting and extending approaches borrowed from the purely software domain is a fundamental opportunity in this scenario. In particular, this paper addresses code mobility, a well-established approach used to dynamically adapt a distributed system based on the actual application needs, and extends it to a deep code mobility concept, allowing 'logical' hardware components to be migrated across a pervasive infrastructure. The work presents the architecture and the prototype implementation of a reconfigurable computing framework providing full support to deep code mobility through an abstraction layer which exposes a portable view of the underlying reconfigurable hardware. The paper then thoroughly discusses two application scenarios, hardware-accelerated distributed data mining and autonomous online testing, confirming the impact of deep code mobility in real-world pervasive computing contexts.

Keywords: pervasive computing; ubiquitous systems; code mobility; reconfigurable computing; field-programmable gate array; FPGA; adaptive systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJES.2018.095024

International Journal of Embedded Systems, 2018 Vol.10 No.5, pp.366 - 377

Received: 18 Mar 2015
Accepted: 19 Aug 2015
Published online: 01 Oct 2018 *

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