Recent Advances in Field-Programmable Logic and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

The end of Dennard scaling and Moore’s law has led to the rise of heterogeneous systems, which, in combination with the emergence of very active fields like Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics, have extraordinarily broadened the potential applicability of field-programmable logic. Reconfigurable platforms can now be employed over an impressive range of applications that goes from smart, self-adaptive embedded systems near the edge of the cloud to the data centers at its core, and includes the communication links in between. In this challenging environment, field-programmable logic enables new tradeoffs between performance, power efficiency, security, flexibility and dependability. Simultaneously, device architectures and development tools have been evolving to meet the new challenges.

This Special Issue will bring together high-quality contributions that highlight novel approaches and recent breakthroughs in all areas related to programmable logic (technology, architectures, EDA tools and methodologies) as well as emerging application domains ranging from embedded systems up to data centers. The topics covered by the Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• Device technology for field-programmable logic: programmable memories interconnect devices, circuits and switches, and emerging technologies.
• Reconfigurable heterogeneous platforms: FPGA/PMPSoC and CGRA architectures; overlays; hardware acceleration frameworks.
• Programmable logic in the data center: CPU/FPGA communication; memory interfaces; FPGA virtualization; operating system services.
• Design methodologies and tools: high-level synthesis, hardware/software co-design; debugging and profiling; programming languages and frameworks; modelling and validation techniques; binary compilation.
• Dynamic reconfiguration: tools and techniques; run-time reconfigurable processor architectures; evolvable hardware and adaptive computing.
• High performance applications: machine learning, large-scale data analytics, stream processing, database acceleration, machine vision, graphics, cryptography, robotics, and manufacturing systems.
• Reconfigurable heterogeneous hardware for security applications: IP protection, certification and validation of configuration information, protection against side-channel attacks.  

Prof. Dr. João Canas Ferreira
Guest Editor

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