RUNNING RECONFIGME OS OVER PETA LINUX OS MUHAMMED KHALID RAHIM DR. GRANT WIGLEY ID:

2 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).

3 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?

4 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 Tier Performs the interaction between user and operating system. 2. Operating System Tier Responsible for allocation and partitioning of applications and transfer of application data and configuration information between platform and user tier. 3. Platform Tier Responsible for communication to and from the reconfigurable platform.

5 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

6 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.

7 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

8 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

9 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.

10 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 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 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 PetaLinux configuration guide [