A Multi-Core Reconfigurable Architecture for Ultra-Low Power Bio-Signal Analysis

This paper introduces a novel computing architecture devoted to the ultra-low power analysis of multiple bio-signals. Its structure comprises several processors interfaced with a shared acceleration resource, implemented as a Coarse Grained Reconfigurable Array (CGRA). The CGRA supports the efficient execution of the computationally intensive kernels present in this application domain, while requiring a low reconfiguration overhead. The run-time behavior of the resulting heterogeneous system is orchestrated by a light-weight hardware mechanism, which concurrently synchronizes processors and regulates access to the reconfigurable accelerator. The architecture achieves speed-ups of up to 11x on different bio-signal processing kernels and system-level energy savings of up to 18.6%, with respect to a multi-core platform, which does not feature CGRA acceleration.