Design and Implementation an Operating System for Reconfigurable Systems

Research Goals
      The main goal of this project is to design and implement a free, open-source, working, and efficient OS4RS that can support hardware task and resource management in FPGA, in addition to the conventional software management functions of an OS. The research issues that we would like to address in the course of this project include the following. First, what are the basic services that an OS4RS kernel should provide and how must these services be implemented. Second, what are the required components in an OS4RS architecture and how must they be implemented. Third, what are the basic abstractions that must be supported by an OS4RS and how must they be designed. Fourth, how do we measure the performance of an OS4RS and how must the performance be improved. Besides the above four major issues, there are several specific issues that also need to be addressed in this project, namely creation, loading, allocation, partitioning, scheduling, placement, and routing of hardware tasks. A hardware task is not as well-defined as a software process in an OS. Thus, we need to solve issues related to the hardware task such as its relocatability, portability, preemption ability, and context saving and reloading. Finally, we need to determine and implement the hardware support that an OS4RS needs for efficient management.
(Read more...)