Reconfiguration Time Measurements for Evolving Hardware

<p>The dataset contains the raw measurements of the time necessary to reconfigure Lattice iCE40 FPGAs.</p> <p>The main goal is to see the effect of two approaches of implementing the reconfiguration process in software for Evolvable Hardware. One approach is to use existing open-source software externally, the other is to integrate the functionality in the software for Evolvable Hardware.</p> <p>The conditions for the reconfiguration measurements were altered in four dimensions:</p> <ol> <li>The FPGA board <ul> <li>iCEstick <ul> <li>Lattice iCE40 HX1K FPGA</li> <li>Sample bitstream created by <a href="https://github.com/evolvablehardware/BitstreamEvolution">Bitstream Evolution Software</a></li> <li>No direct reconfiguration possible</li> </ul> </li> <li>iCE40 breakout board (ICE40HX8K-B-EVN) <ul> <li>Lattice iCE40 HX8K FPGA</li> <li>Sample bitstream created by CoBEA</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> <li>Write Target <ul> <li>Flash <ul> <li>Bitstream first written to an external EEPROM, then pulled by the FPGA from the EEPROM</li> </ul> </li> <li>Direct <ul> <li>Bitstream written directly to the FPGA</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> <li>Reconfiguration approach <ul> <li>Icestorm <ul> <li>Use external tools from Project Icestorm</li> </ul> </li> <li>CoBEA <ul> <li>Use integrated function of CoBEA reconfiguration module</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> <li>Bitstream size <ul> <li>Full <ul> <li>No size reduction</li> </ul> </li> <li>Compact <ul> <li>Size reduced as much as allowed by write approach <ul> <li>Icestorm: skip BRAM</li> <li>CoBEA: skip BRAM, skip comment, full compaction (level 4)</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ol> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>This upload contains three groups of files:</p> <ul> <li>2 bitstreams <ul> <li>One for each used FPGA board</li> </ul> </li> <li>12 measurements <ul> <li>Comma-separated values</li> <li>File name contains the contiditions of the measurement</li> <li>Only 12 out of 16 possible combinations of conditions as &quot;iCEstick&quot; cannot be combined with &quot;Direct&quot;</li> </ul> </li> <li>1 aggregated statistic <ul> <li>Comma-separated values</li> <li>Minimum, mean, maximum, mean-minimum, maximum-mean for every measurement</li> </ul> </li> </ul>