A transparent and energy aware reconfigurable multiprocessor platform for simultaneous ILP and TLP exploitation

As the number of embedded applications increases, companies are launching new platforms within short periods of time to efficiently execute software with the lowest possible energy consumption. However, for each new platform deployment, new tool chains, with additional libraries, debuggers and compilers must come along, breaking binary compatibility. This strategy implies in high hardware and software redesign costs. In this scenario, we propose the exploitation of Custom Reconfigurable Arrays for Multiprocessor Systems (CReAMS). CReAMS is composed of multiple adaptive reconfigurable processors that simultaneously exploit Instruction and Thread Level Parallelism. It works in a transparent fashion, so binary compatibility is maintained, with no need to change the software development process or environment. We also show that CReAMS delivers higher performance per watt in comparison to a 4-issue Superscalar processor, when the same power budget is considered for both designs.