Want to dramatically speed up your applications while maintaining flexibility? This survey explores the hardware and software aspects of reconfigurable computing, a field known for its potential to accelerate diverse applications. Reconfigurable computing combines the performance benefits of hardware computation with the adaptability of software solutions. The study examines reconfigurable computing machines, from single-chip architectures to multi-chip systems, detailing internal structures and external coupling. It also focuses on the software tools used to map high-level algorithms to the reconfigurable substrate, emphasizing the issues involved in run-time reconfigurable systems that reuse configurable hardware during program execution. This review provides a comprehensive overview of reconfigurable computing, offering insights for researchers and practitioners seeking to leverage its unique advantages in various computational domains.
Published in ACM Computing Surveys, this survey of reconfigurable computing aligns perfectly with the journal's mission to provide comprehensive overviews of important topics in computer science. By covering both hardware and software aspects, the paper offers a well-rounded perspective on this rapidly evolving field, catering to the journal's broad audience of computer scientists and engineers.