Alternative implementations of metabolic P system in FPGA

Metabolic P (MP) system formalism is already proven to be applicable and useful in various fields of science, however knowledge about possibilities of MP system implementation in a hardware is limited. The use of a reconfigurable hardware empowers investigation in a search of the best implementation strategy for specified computing. Thus in the paper FPGA implementation techniques for MP systems were examined and compared. The MP system that models the process of Glucose-Insulin interactions in the intravenous glucose tolerance test was used in the study. It was implemented in FPGA by the use of three alternative FPGA implementation techniques: single process, single DSP slice and pipelined implementation. Experimental results together with suggested evaluation metrics were estimated. It was shown that single DSP slice implementation is preferable if minimal FPGA resource utilization is required, while pipelined technique use yields MP system that has a better balance between operating frequency and latency.