Architecture-Level Exploration of Alternative Interconnection Schemes Targeting 3D FPGAs: A Software-Supported Methodology

In current reconfigurable architectures, the interconnection structures increasingly contribute more to the delay and power consumption. The demand for increased clock frequencies and logic density (smaller area footprint) makes the problem even more important. Three-Dimensional (3D) architectures are able to alleviate this problem by accommodating a number of functional layers, each of which might be fabricated in different technology. However, the benefits of such integration technology have not been sufficiently explored yet. In this paper, the authors propose a software-supported methodology for exploring and evaluating alternative interconnection schemes for 3D FPGAs. In order to support the proposed methodology, three new CAD tools were developed (part of the 3D MEANDER Design Framework).