Typical reconfigurable machines exhibit shortcomings that make them less than ideal for general-purpose computing. The Garp Architecture combines reconfigurable hardware with a standard MIPS processor on the same die to retain the better features of both. Novel aspects of the architecture are presented, as well as a prototype software environment and preliminary performance results. Compared to an UltraSPARC, a Garp of similar technology could achieve speedups ranging from a factor of 2 to as high as a factor of 24 for some useful applications.
Index Terms:
coprocessors; Garp Architecture; MIPS processor; reconfigurable coprocessor; reconfigurable machines; general-purpose computing; prototype software environment; performance; UltraSPARC; speedups; field programmable gate arrays; FPGA
Citation:
J.R. Hauser, J. Wawrzynek, "Garp: a MIPS processor with a reconfigurable coprocessor," fccm, pp.12, 5th IEEE Symposium on FPGA-Based Custom Computing Machines (FCCM '97), 1997