FlexNode: a reconfigurable Internet of Things node for design evaluation

Accurate evaluation of Ultra Low Power Systems on Chip (ULP SoC) is a huge challenge for designers and developers. In embedded applications, especially for Internet of Things end-node devices, ULP SoCs have to interact with their environment, but modelling a complete SoC and the peripheral components, their interaction and low-power policies, can be very complex in terms of developments and benchmarking. In order to cope with this challenge, an approach is to implement the desired system on FPGA with a monitoring infrastructure dedicated to fast and accurate evaluation. This paper presents a reconfigurable prototyping platform used for SoC architecture exploration and real-time application evaluation.