Implementation and evaluation of dynamic partial reconfiguration techniques on cryptographic algorithms

Abstract

In recent years the advantages of reconfigurable computing have make FPGAs important parts of many applications. One interesting characteristic of FPGAs is their ability to change parts of the design that runs on them dynamically. This procedure is called Partial Reconfiguration (PR). One disadvantage of PR is that sometimes it takes too much time to be completed and for real-time applications it has to be able to be executed fast. The purpose of this thesis is the implementation of designs that can perform PR with high throughput. When a reconfiguration is taken place a partial bitstream file must be transferred from a memory where it is stored to the reconfiguration memory of the FPGA. This transfer can be executed by software code that runs on a processor (e.g. PowerPC or MicroBlaze) or by hardware. For this thesis several designs were implemented, each one uses one of these methods to transfer the partial bitstream and a deferent memory where the partial bitstreams are stored. The memories that were used on these designs were a Compact Flash, a DDR2 SDRAM and a SRAM. The final result was a design that can perform PR with high throughput.