Partially Reconfigurable Cores for Xilinx Virtex

Recent generations of high-density and high-speed FPGAs provide a sufficient capacity for implementing complete configurable systems on a chip (CSoCs). Hybrid CPUs that combine standard CPU cores with reconfigurable coprocessors are an important subclass of CSoCs. With partially reconfigurable FPGAs, coprocessors can be loaded on demand while the CPU remains running. However, the lack of high-level design tools for partial reconfiguration makes practical implementations a challenging task. In this paper, we introduce a design flow to implement hybrid processors on Xilinx Virtex. The design flow is based on two techniques, virtual sockets and feed-through components, and can efficiently generate partial configurations from industry-quality cores. We discuss the design flow and present a fully operational audio streaming prototype to demonstrate its feasibility.