Routing architecture for multi-context FPGAs

Multi-context FPGAs are a convenient solution for run-time reconfiguration, but they suffer from large area occupation. This is mainly due to programmable interconnect configuration memories which need to be replicated as many times as the number of contexts. This limitation can be overcome with a DBM (Decoder Based Multicontext) routing architecture which introduces a decoding stage between configuration memories and routing structures, so that the number of SRAM cells can be highly reduced. Both the switch and connect blocks have been designed, at the architectural and schematic level. A suitable router for DBM structures has also been developed. The results show that the approach adopted requires on average only 5% more tracks whereas the device area occupation is reduced up to 40%. We also show that DBM routing architecture does not affect the critical path delay, due to the reduction of the routing wire length.