Single-chip self-configurable parallel processor
US5450557A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jun 29, 1994 |
| Grant date | Sep 12, 1995 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jun 29, 2014 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F2207/3888
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A self-contained, self-configurable cascadable pipelined processor chip (160) is diclosed. The chip contains a computation section (FIGS. 1a-1d) which consists of various types of computation circuits (20-42) that can be software-interconnected in any desired configuration by a set of multiplexers (44-52) whose settings are under the control of a control section (FIG. 2 ). The control section consists of various types of control circuits (60-76) which are also software-interconnectable in any desired configuration under program control. The chip (160) is configured by a very long instruction word and then executes the algorithm defined by that configuration iteratively until stopped. The chip (160) can be programmed to reconfigure itself in response to computation results or other selectable parameters, either in accordance with internally stored configurations or in accordance with configuration information stored in an external random access memory (56, 58). Internal reconfiguration requires no separate reconfiguration time at all, and external reconfiguration can be accomplished in less than 10 .mu.s.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.