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Partial Reconfiguration (PR) is a technique that allows reconfiguring the FPGA chip at runtime. However, current design support tools require manual floorplanning of the partial modules. Several approaches have been proposed in this field, but only a few of them consider all aspects of PR, like the shape and the aspect ratio of the reconfigurable region. Most of them are defined for old FPGA architectures and have a high computational time. This paper introduces an efficient automatic floorplanning algorithm, which takes into account the heterogeneous architectures of modern FPGA families, as well as PR constraints, introducing the aspect ratio constraint to optimize routing. The algorithm generates possible placements of the partial modules, then applies a recursive pseudobipartitioning heuristic search to find the best floorplan. The experiments showed that the algorithm's performance is significantly better than the one of other algorithms in this field.I.

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This paper presents an iterative method for designing FIR filters that implement arbitrary magnitude characteristics, defined by the user through a set of frequency-magnitude points (frequency samples). The proposed method is based on the non-uniform frequency sampling algorithm. For each iteration a new set of frequency samples is generated, by processing the set used in the previous run; this implies changing the samples location around the previous frequency values and adjusting their magnitude through interpolation. If necessary, additional samples can be introduced, as well. After each iteration the magnitude characteristic of the resulting filter is determined by using the non-uniform DFT and compared with the required one; if the errors are larger than the acceptable levels (set by the user) a new iteration is run; the length of the resulting filter and the values of its coefficients are also taken into consideration when deciding a re-run. To demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method a tool for designing FIR filters that match human audiograms was implemented in LabVIEW. It was shown that the resulting filters have smaller coefficients than the standard one, and can also have lower order, while the errors remain relatively small

Virtual laboratories can become important components of the teaching process, because using them several experiment-oriented problems can be solved easily and also from the distance. Graduates using virtual laboratories will be better trained when they enter the job market. In the paper a laboratory work will be presented having two components: a simulation and an experimental module. Both can be used for the preparation of a real lab and for accessing the real-world experiments. The virtual lab modules can also allow multiple students to remote access the experiments, the multicast data transfer mechanisms and arbitration mechanisms.