Using Linux FIFOs to allow Flexible Hardware/Software Communications on Reconfigurable Systems-on-Chip

Inhalt:
This describes work-in-progress towards using common Linux Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanisms, such as pipes and FIFOs, for linking software and hardware processing modules, so that a programmer can access hardware accelerators simply by replacing software tasks with hardware tasks at command line level, with no changes to other software modules. Additionally, a FIFO router is being developed that allows data to be dynamically switched between software and hardware tasks at runtime, allowing stateless task migration between hardware and software.