Reiner W. Hartenstein

Pioneer of hardware description languages and reconfigurable computing, Hartenstein is known for the successful hardware design language KARL and its graphical companion language ABL, as well as for configware/software co-compilation techniques.

Hartenstein received all his academic degrees from the EE Department at Karlsruhe University, where he later became Associate Professor of Computer Science, before joining Kaiserslautern University of Technology (TU Kaiserslautern) as Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. Before joining Kaiserslautern he worked in character recognition, image processing, digital and hybrid circuits and systems, computer architecture, microprogramming, and high-level hardware description languages.

At Kaiserslautern he worked on computer structures, high-level hardware description languages, and on VLSI design methods and tools. For about ten years he and his group worked on reconfigurable computing and related compilation techniques. Supported by various funding agencies, the achievements of his group included the definition and implementation of the successful hardware design language KARL; its graphical companion language ABL; the Xputer machine paradigm (data-driven procedural operation principles: counterpart of the control-procedural "von Neumann" paradigm); the reconfigurable KressArray family (reconfigurable generalization of the systolic array); and co-compilation for configware/software co-design.

Hartenstein has served as an FPL Fellow and IEEE Fellow, and has organized numerous international workshops and conferences. He founded or co-founded IFIP working group 10.2 (now 10.5); the FPL international conference series (Field-Programmable Logic and Applications); the PATMOS international workshop series on low-power VLSI design; EUROMICRO; the Reconfigurable Computing Education Workshop series; and the German Multi University E.I.S.-Project (VLSI-Design).

He has been invited to many international conferences as an invited speaker, keynote speaker, embedded tutorial speaker, and as a panelist. Hartenstein authored or co-authored more than 400 papers, and authored, edited, or co-edited 16 books.