Architecture of IoT-Based Collaborative Laboratory for Reconfigurable SoC: Review and Development

Reconfigurable System-on-Chip (SoC) is a computing architecture that allows users to program and reprogram the hardware to perform different tasks, making it highly flexible and adaptable. Due to its potential to significantly accelerate various applications, reconfigurable SoC has become a subject of much research for academicians and industry. On the other hand, the classical practice of experimenting in the laboratory has been changing radically with the advanced utilization of computers, electronic devices, and the internet. As a result, it has given birth to a new concept of laboratory practice called Internet-of-Things (IoT) based collaborative simulation laboratory, which enables students to access and use the laboratory equipment at their convenience, enabling them to learn at their own pace and comfort. First, this paper reviewed the state of the art of reconfigurable SoC, specially Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) laboratory architecture. Then, it developed an IoT-based collaborative simulation laboratory for reconfigurable SoC, allowing multiple students to work together to solve laboratory tasks remotely. Furthermore, this laboratory architecture is for reconfigurable FPGAs, which can manage several tasks automatically, such as logic synthesis, logic simulation, and FPGA run from multiple FPGAs or SoC. In addition to its benefits, the capability to virtualize user input/output interfaces and remotely measure the design's response further enhances its advantages. However, this proposed laboratory architecture is essential not only for doing laboratory tasks remotely but also simplifies the existing teaching methods and helping evaluate student performance in the examination.