Speculative Thread Framework for Transient Management and Bumpless Transfer in Reconfigurable Digital Filters

Abstract: There are many methods developed to mitigate transients induced when abruptly changing dynamic algorithms such as those found in digital filters or controllers. These "bumpless transfer" methods have a computational burden to them and take time to implement, causing a delay in the desired switching time. This paper develops a method that automatically reconfigures the computational resources in order to implement a transient management method without any delay in switching times. The method spawns a speculative thread when it predicts if a switch in algorithms is imminent so that the calculations are done prior to the switch being made. The software framework is described and experimental results are shown for a switching between filters in a filter bank.