Writing a host application that does not need to reprogram the FPGA

You can use "export CL_CONTEXT_COMPILER_MODE_ALTERA=3" to disable run-time reconfiguration. I regularly use this when benchmarking to prevent the FPGA from being reprogrammed every time. Just be careful that if you need to use run-time reconfiguration again, you must unset that environmental variable. It has happened to me multiple times that I forgot to unset it and a few days later tried to run a new kernel on the FPGA and was scratching my head for half an hour trying to figure out why I get "CL_INVALID_KERNEL_ARGS". :D