Integrating FPGA-based Processing Elements into a Runtime for Parallel Heterogeneous Computing

In this work, we present an approach how FPGA-based computing can be integrated into a heterogeneous computing environment in an embedded systems context, using the x10rt run-time of the X10 language system as a case-study. To this end, we present a hardware/software framework for pools of reconfigurable compute elements, and show how high-level synthesis can be employed to generate the actual processing cores. Our framework is sufficiently lean to deliver high performance FPGA implementations even at high area utilization (operating at 250 MHz with up to 90% of the device area used), and capable of low-latency access to pools of dozens of instances of custom IP cores, automatically generated by high-level synthesis tools.