A multiprocessor self-reconfigurable jpeg2000 encoder

This paper presents a multiprocessor architecture prototype on a Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) with support for hardware and software multithreading. Thanks to partial dynamic reconfiguration, this system can, at run time, spawn both software and hardware threads, sharing not only the general purpose soft-cores present in the architecture but also area on the FPGA. While on a standard single processor architecture the partial dynamic reconfiguration requires the processor to stop working to instantiate the hardware threads, the proposed solution hides most of the reconfiguration latency through the parallel execution of software threads. We validate our framework on a JPEG 2000 encoder, showing how threads are spawned, executed and joined independently of their hardware or software nature. We also show results confirming that, by using the proposed approach, we are able to hide the reconfiguration time.