The research described in this paper shows how the runtime relocation of a reconfigurable component can be obtained using a system component that is able to update the bitstream information, moving the reconfigurable module in the desired position. This scenario defines the so-called partial bitstream relocation activity. This paper proposes a re- location filter that can be implemented both as a hardware and a software component. The former is hosted in the static part of the reconfigurable architecture, while the latter is made to be run on the processor placed on the field-programmable gate array (FPGA). The proposed approach has also been validated over different FPGAs, i.e., Virtex II Pro, Virtex 4, and Virtex 5, proposing a runtime relocation support that can be customized to meet all the different constraints associated with these different target architectures

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FPGAs allow the creation of partially reconfigurable systems; when compared to traditional reconfigurable systems based on total reconfiguration, recent approaches offer significant innovations. One of these is the possibility of dynamically change the functionalities hosted on the device only when needed and while the rest of the system keeps working. This permits better performance but increases the complexity of both module creation and placement. This paper describes and compares two different solutions, a HW and a SW one, to perform bitstream relocation: BiRF and BAnMaT Light. The former is a hardware filter in the fixed part of the reconfigurable architecture, the latter is a software solution, run on the internal processor of the FPGA

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