RUNNING RECONFIGME OS OVER PETA LINUX OS

MUHAMMED KHALID RAHIMDR. GRANT WIGLEY

ID: 110022671

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Introduction

• There are some limitations on Reconfigurable platform as compared to usual microprocessor based system. With the latest FPGA having more than 10 million gates and by using dynamic reconfiguration it is now possible to run multiple applications on a single FPGA. This improvement of technology in FPGA made it a candidate for operating system as previously it was not possible because of shortage of resources over it.

• The concept of operating system for FPGA platform was first proposed by (Wigley & Kearney 2001). They introduced ReConfigMe operating system for FPGA boards. It allows execution of multiple applications simultaneously. Then an embedded Linux for FPGA was introduced by (William & Bergmann 2004).

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Introduction

• All these developments are having master/slave relationship, where microprocessor based desktop or PC running Linux, Unix or Windows acts as a master is connected with single or multiple FPGA boards which acts as slave. This master/slave relationship has some bandwidth limitations which does not allow us to fully utilize this FPGA hardware.

• With the development of soft processor MicroBlaze and built in FPGA hard board processors there is a need that FPGA should work as a standalone device without having master salve relationship or external dependency. This feasibility study is to check out that whether we can port ReConfigMe operating system over Petalinux operating system or not?

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ReConfigMe It is an operating system for reconfigurable computing developed by

UniSA. It allows to share FPGA resources dynamically between multiple

executing applications. It involves external interface to communicate with FPGA device. It is divided into three tiers which are

1. User TierPerforms the interaction between user and operating system.2. Operating System TierResponsible for allocation and partitioning of applications andtransfer of application data and configuration informationbetween platform and user tier.3. Platform TierResponsible for communication to and from the reconfigurableplatform.

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PetaLinux It is an embedded operating system developed by PetaLogix

for FPGA. It also requires master / slave communication to work. It works on Xilinx FPGA.

Needs physical connection for communication

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Benefits of this Study

If we successfully port the ReconfigMe OS over

PetaLinux OS then we will get following benefit FPGA will be able to work as a standalone device

without having external dependency or master/slave relationship.

FPGA will be able to run multiple applications simultaneously.

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Hardware Requirements

512 Mbyte RAM Pentium 4 2GHz CPU clock or equivalent 5 Gbyte free HDD space OS installed [Community Enterprise Linux 5

(CentOS 5)] A parallel port - Depending on the JTAG

configuration solution

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Software Requirements

Xilinx ISE and EDK design and synthesis Tools Kermit console program for communication with

the target device 5 Gbyte free HDD space TFTP File Server NFS Server

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Work Done

All required tools have been installed and configured according to the requirements of PetaLinux.

Petalinux have been ported to the FPGA Next step is to run ReconfigMe operating system

over PetaLinux.

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References

• Wigley, G, Kearney, D & Warren, D 2002,’Introducing ReconfigMe: An operating system for reconfigurable computing’, Presented at Field-programmable logic and applications, reconfigurable Computing is going Mainstream, 12th International Conference FPL, Montpellier, France, P.8.

• Wigley, G, Kearney, D 2001,’ The Development of an Operating System for Reconfigurable Computing’, Proc. IEEE Symp. FPG As for Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), 2001, P.1-11.

• William, J & Bergmann, N 2004,’Embedded Linux as a platform for dynamically self-reconfiguring systems-on-chip', Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering of Reconfigurable Systems and Algorithms, ERSA'04, P. 163-169.

• William, J, Bergmann, N & Xie, X 2005, ‘FIFO Communication Models in Operating Systems for Reconfigurable Computing', Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering

of Reconfigurable Systems and Algorithms, ERSA 04, P. 163-169. • PetaLinux configuration guide [http://www.petalogix.com]