Discrete and Logico-Numerical Control for Dynamic Partial Reconfigurable FPGA-Based Embedded Systems: A Case Study

Embedded systems need to be more and more self-adaptive, in order to better manage their constrained resources, and to better take into account evolutions in their environment and in their computing architecture. They can benefit from Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) architectures, which supports Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (DPR) of the running fonctions, enabling improved performance and power consumption. The reconfigurations need to be decided and controlled in a closed loop. We approach this problem by applying techniques from the area of Supervisory Control for Discrete Event Systems (DES), where the space of configurations at the different levels (application, tasks, hardware platform) are modeled with automata, using the tools Heptagon/BZR and ReaX. This paper contributes with (i) generic modeling of the behaviors and objectives; (ii) applications of Discrete Controller Synthesis (DCS), especially logico-numerical control; (iii) concrete implementation on a FPGA hardware platform for an embedded video processing case study.