Reconfigurable Computing A review of the technology and its architecture

Reconfigurable computing is a computer architecture which is intended to fill the gap between the hardware and the software, achieving potentially much higher performance than software, while maintaining a higher level of flexibility than hardware. Most commonly and widely used high speed computing fabrics deployed in reconfigurable computing are field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). This paper illustrates the architecture used in reconfigurable computing and also demonstrates the advantages of using reconfigurable computing design over conventional ASIC or a simple microprocessor for achieving high level of performance for a specific application. Keywords; ASIC – Application Specific Integrated Circuit, FPGAField Programmable Gate Array, GPUGraphics Processor Unit, LUTLookup Table, RCReconfigurable Computing