A modeling method for reconfigurable architectures

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are now integrated in complex electronic systems and are not only used during the prototyping phases. Moreover, their application space is getting larger thanks to their flexibility, which is obtained through the reconfiguration. For these reasons component industries are proposing more and more FPGAs with different architectures, sizes, capabilities. Designers are then faced to a larger choice in the design space but they do not have any tool to efficiently compare different reconfigurable architectures. In this paper a reconfigurable architecture zodeling method is presented. The proposed model is applied to a domain representative component in order to show its ability to describe a complex architecture. The modeling method, which is based on a functional view, is able to describe complex, heterogeneous and multi-granularity architectures. In future works the modeling method will be combined to a generic FPGA architecture estimation tool.