Microkernel dedicated for dynamic partial reconfiguration on ARM-FPGA platform

Abstract : This paper describes the first implementation of a custom micro-kernel on a ARM-FPGA platform capable of manag-ing reconfigurable hardware parts dynamically. After de-scribing the structure of the proposed micro-kernel, we will focus on a custom specific system task dealing with the re-configuration management, which is associated to a dedi-cated scheduling mechanism. We will describe the hardware platform on which the microkernel has been ported and pro-vide a use case application in order to demonstrate the fea-sibility of the approach. At the end of this paper, we will provide quantitative results in terms of reconfiguration over-head and microkernel timing performances.