Runtime Reconfigurable Processors

The current state of the art in processor performance improvements are multicore-processor systems. These systems offer a number of homogeneous and static processor cores for the parallel distribution of computational tasks. Another approach are reconfigurable processors or reconfigurable multicore processor systems, which can adapt to program needs on the fly during runtime. This is done through swapping different kinds of functional units in and out or by giving the processor freely available space for hardware configuration. After years of just being a research field such systems can be seen in the wild. For example the HC1 architecture from Convey or the combination of an Intel Atom processor with an Altera FPGA. The talk will introduce the audience to the field of reconfigurable processors. It will classify the different kinds of such processors and describe some architectures briefly. At the end general security issues are explained.