This cutting-edge book reviews the challenges and difficulties encountered in the design of reconfigurable Systems-on-Chip (SoCs). Reconfiguration is becoming an important part of System-on-Chip design to cope with the increasing demands for simultaneous flexibility and computational power. The book focuses on system level design issues for reconfigurable SoCs, and provides information on reconfiguration aspects of complex SoCs and how they can be implemented in practice. Part I provides background information and requirements on reconfigurable technologies and systems. Part II identifies existing methodological gaps, and introduces a design flow for developing reconfigurable Systems-on-Chip. The high level part of the design flow can be covered by two C++ based methodologies: one based on SystemC and one based on OCAPI-XL, both including appropriate extensions to handle reconfiguration issues. Part III of the book presents reconfigurable SoCs from the perspective of the designer, through three indicative case studies from the wireless and multimedia communication domain.

Describes in a consolidated way the results of a three-year research project, during which researchers from leading european industrial companies and research institutes have been working together. Contributors come from academia and industry, such companies as INTRACOM, VTT and Nokia being represented Proposes brand new approaches based on SystemC and OCAPI-XL that explicitly handle issues related to reconfiguration at the system level Introduces a design flow for designing reconfigurable systems-on-chip Provides a comprehensive introduction to reconfigurable hardware and existing reconfigurable technologies Presents examples on how reconfigurable hardware can be exploited for the development of complex systems Provides useful feedback from the application of the proposed design flow and system level design methods on different real life design cases Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt
to Reconfigurable Hardware.- Reconfigurable Hardware Exploitation in Wireless Multimedia Communications.- Reconfigurable Hardware Technologies.- Design Flow for Reconfigurable Systems-on-Chip.- SystemC Based Approach.- OCAPI-XL Based Approach.- MPEG-4 Video Decoder.- Prototyping of a HIPERLAN/2 Reconfigurable System-on-Chip.- WCDMA Detector.