A Design Methodology for Very Large Array Processors—part 1: Gipop Processor Array

Abstract

Very Large Array Processors (VLAP) will be the need of the future for solving computationally intense Very Large Problems (VLP) common in pattern recognition, image processing and other related areas of digital signal processing. Design methodology of such VLAPs for massively parallel dedicated/general purpose applications is highly complex. Two companion papers (Part 1 and Part 2) on VLAP are presented in this issue. In Part 1, we propose a VLAP called Reconfigurable GIPOP Processor Array (RGPA). The RGPA is made up of high performance processing elements called the Generalized Inner Product Outer Product (GIPOP) processor. Unlike the traditional special/general purpose processors, ours has a totally different and new architecture and organization involving higher level functional units to match with the complex computational structures of numeric algorithms and suitable for massively parallel processing. We also present a strategy for mapping VLPs on VLAPs. In Part 2, we propose a novel VLSI design methodology for implementing cost effective and very high performance processors meant for special purpose applications and in particular, for VLAPs.