Exploring Non-Traditional Hardware-Software Interaction

The joint test action group (JTAG) has created what has become a world-wide standard/debug interface for a variety of hardware devices. The emergence of devices such as the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA, which closely couple advanced microprocessors with reconfigurable logic, presents an opportunity to expand JTAG's capabilities beyond debugging. We present the design and implementation of a platform that combines JTAG, reconfigurable logic, and advanced processor debug features to create a rich environment for exploring non-traditional interaction between hardware and software. More specifically, we outline several possible configurations, discuss performance, and present possible applications