Over the last decade, the focus of reconfigurable computing has dramatically shifted from academic research into industrial applications and especially in supporting and accelerating high-data stream applications in commercial and military applications. This is due to need changes and the densities available in today’s field-programmable chips. However, there are still hurdles such as not having an easy programming model to facilitate high-level programmers in hardware-software co-design and development for embedded systems. This paper talks generally about the architectural shifts over the last decade, the tools and methodologies challenges for hardware-software co-design and development and the near and long-term future for its growth.

Tirumale K Ramesh is a Boeing Associate Technical Fellow and a Senior Engineer/Scientist at The Boeing Company. He has over 20 years of professional experience with expertise in the area of parallel processing, high performance reconfigurable architecture and networks and related chip level architectures. Prior to joining Boeing, Ramesh has held architecture, design and development positions at Indian Space Research Center in India, Lockheed Martin Corporation where he successfully led a product development group and developed system specifications and architecture for advanced missile launching systems. He was a Senior Scientist at IBM where he took technical leadership and was instrumental in developing an ASIC system design solution development team for supporting IBM worldwide customers and ASIC business development. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and is co-chairing the Northern Virginia/Washington IEEE Computer Society Chapter. Dr. Ramesh has wide external publications in international conferences and journals and has written many industrial reports/white papers/application notes in computing systems and architecture. Ramesh has presented at Internal Boeing Technical Excellence conferences.

Ramesh has a BSEE from India, an MSEE from Mississippi State University in VLSI and a Ph.D Degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Oakland University in Michigan.