Applied Reconfigurable Computing Workshop (ARC 2009)

Welcome

On behalf of the ARC 2009 Organising Committee, we would like to extend our warmest welcome to the 5th International Workshop on Applied Reconfigurable Computing. This year's workshop is hosted by hosted by ITIV - Institut für Technik der Informationsverarbeitung/Institute for Information Processing Technolog, Karlsruhe, Germany.

Reconfigurable Computing (RC) technologies offer the promise of substantial performance gains over traditional architectures by customizing, sometimes at runtime, the topology of the underlying architecture to match the specific needs of a given application. Contemporary configurable architectures allow for the definition of architectures with functional and storage units that match the specific needs of a given computation, in terms of function, bit-width and control structures. Compared to standard microprocessor architectures, advantages are possible in terms of power consumption on a broad range of different application fields. Moreover, the flexibility enabled by reconfiguration is also seen as a basic technique for overcoming transient failures in emerging device structures.

Techniques for achieving reconfigurable systems are numerous and require the joint development of reconfigurable hardware systems to support the dynamic behavior, e.g. suitable programming models, tools and languages, to support the reconfiguration process during run-time as well as during design-time. This includes verification techniques that can demonstrate formally correct reconfiguration sequences at each stage. While there are many problems, the existence and development of technologies such as recent multi- and many-core processor architectures, dynamically reconfigurable and multi-grain computing architectures, as well as application-specific processors suggest that there is a very strong need for adaptive and reconfigurable systems.

The International Workshop of Applied Reconfigurable Computing (ARC) aims to bring together researchers and practitioners of reconfigurable computing with an emphasis on practical applications of this promising technology. This year's workshop is accompanied by selected international invited speakers with strong views on the future of reconfigurable technology. This LNCS volume includes papers selected for the fifth edition of the Workshop (ARC 2009), held at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany on March 16-18, 2009. The ARC 2009 workshop has attracted a large number of high quality papers, describing interesting work on research related to applied reconfigurable computing. A total of sixty five papers were submitted to the workshop from 22 countries: Japan (9), Germany (8), UK (7), Spain (5), Ireland (4), Republic of South Korea (3), Italy (3), France (3), Netherlands (3), Poland (2), USA (2), Republic of China (2), Portugal (2), Thailand (2), Brazil (2), Mexico (2), Greece (1), India (1), Iran (1), Romania (1), Pakistan (1), and Finland (1). This distribution is reflective of the international engagement in the disciplines related to reconfigurable systems.

In all cases, submitted papers were evaluated by three members of the program committee. After careful selection, 21 papers have been accepted as full papers (acceptance rate of 32.3%) and 14 as short papers (global acceptance rate of 64.6%). Those accepted papers lead to a very interesting workshop program, which we consider to constitute a representative overview of on-going research efforts in applied reconfigurable computing, a rapidly evolving and maturing field.

The workshop is distinguished with a strong focus on interdisciplinary applications of reconfigurable systems. Of the 21 papers selected for presentation, and of the nine presentation sessions, one third are directly devoted to reconfigurable systems applications. Closely related to the application theme, other sessions at the workshop include resource allocation and scheduling, FPGA security and bitstream analysis, architectures, cryptography, and placement and routing strategies. As reflected by the diverse program, the application domains that are impacted by reconfigurable computing continues to expand. ARC continues to serve the international community by providing a forum for intellectual exchange of technologies, methodologies, and thought.

We would like to thank all the authors for submitting their first versions of the papers and the final versions of the accepted papers. We would like to acknowledge the support of all the members of this year's Steering and Program Committees in reviewing papers, in helping the paper selection and in giving valuable suggestions. We would also like to thank the members of the Organizing Committee for their competent guidance and work in the last month, as well as Springer Publishers for their continuous support of this event. Special thanks are dedicated to the distinguished invited speakers and their contribution to the technical program.