Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration of Concurrent Control Systems Implemented in FPGA Devices

A novel prototyping technique for concurrent control systems implemented in field programmable gate array (FPGA) devices is proposed in the paper. The method allows for dynamic modification of the implemented system. It means that the functionality of a part of the controller can be changed, while the rest of the system is still running. The approach applies to unified modeling language state machine diagrams as a specification of the system. Contrary to other methods, the presented concept requires neither major changes to the design, nor the application of external, specialized tools. The proposed idea has been experimentally verified with the use of Xilinx FPGAS.