MORPHEUS: A heterogeneous dynamically reconfigurable platform for designing highly complex embedded systems

• Published in: ACM transactions on embedded computing systems 2013-03, Vol.12 (3), p.1-33
• Main Authors: Voros, Nikolaos S., Hübner, Michael, Becker, Jürgen, Kühnle, Matthias, Thomaitiv, Florian, Grasset, Arnaud, Brelet, Paul, Bonnot, Philippe, Campi, Fabio, Schüler, Eberhard, Sahlbach, Henning, Whitty, Sean, Ernst, Rolf, Billich, Enrico, Tischendorf, Claudia, Heinkel, Ulrich, Ieromnimon, Frank, Kritharidis, Dimitrios, Schneider, Axel, Knaeblein, Joachim, Putzke-Röming, Wolfram
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1539-9087; 1558-3465
• DOI: 10.1145/2442116.2442120

Recently, system designers are facing the challenge of developing systems that have diverse features, are more complex and more powerful, with less power consumption and reduced time to market. These contradictory constraints have forced technology providers to pursue design solutions that will allow design teams to meet the above design targets. In that respect, this paper introduces an innovative technology platform, called MORPHEUS, which intents to provide complete design framework for dealing with the aforementioned challenges. MORPHEUS consists of a state of the art architecture that encompasses heterogeneous reconfigurable accelerators for implementing on the same hardware architecture applications with varying characteristics and a tool chain that, through a software oriented approach, eases the implementation of highly complex applications with heterogeneous characteristics. The proposed approach has been tested and evaluated through state of the art cases studies borrowed from complementary application domains.