ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the concept of component granularity and homogenous versus heterogeneous organization of the field of configurable resources (FCR). Two fundamental aspects must be considered when describing an FCR: the granularity of the basic elements of the FCR and the organization of the synthesis of larger components from basic elements. Essentially, a higher granularity of basic data-processing elements in FCR minimizes the volume of configuration data, configuration memory, communication routing infrastructure, and associated hardware overhead. The FCR in a system is not limited to on-chip configurable resources only. The FCR should be considered at several levels and can consist of multiple programmable logic devices on a board or even multiple boards with reconfigurable logic devices in the entire reconfigurable computing system. Resource utilization effectiveness in FCR depends on how many elements of each resource type can be used during the period of task execution.
