Power consumption advantage of a dynamic optically reconfigurable gate array

Optically reconfigurable gate arrays (ORGAs) are a type of field programmable gate array (FPGA). However, unlike FPGAs, an ORGA can quickly be reconfigured optically using external optical memories and optical connections. Recently, various types of ORGAs have been developed. However, their gate counts were not satisfactory compared with those of FPGAs. Therefore, to improve the gate density of conventional ORGAs, a dynamic ORGA (DORGA) architecture that can remove static memory functions to store a configuration context has been proposed. The DORGA architecture offers not only the advantages of a high gate count, but also the advantage of low reconfiguration power consumption. To date, its power consumption has never been clarified. For that reason, this paper presents measurement results of the optical reconfiguration power consumption of a DORGA-VLSI chip. In addition, the power consumption advantages of the DORGA architecture are clarified through comparison with other ORGAs.