Design Approaches to Application Specific Adaptive Processors
Monday, March 23, 1998
11am-12:15n
Interschool Lab, 7th floor, Schapiro CEPSR Bldg.
Host: Steve Nowick
Abstract
Modern wireless and multimedia applications require high performance, low
power, and inexpensive multiple functionalities. Conventional architectures
fail to meet these requirements of algorithm flexibility and low complexity.
While dedicated ASICs can be optimized to execute a given algorithm in
real-time with very low complexity, they lack the flexibility to perform
a range of algorithms. Software programmable processors, on the other hand,
although highly flexible are complex and have low throughput. Consequently,
rather than optimizing the architecture for a single algorithm or for all
algorithms, we are investigating application specific adaptive architectures
targeting classes of applications. Such architectures yield a suprior tradeoff
between low complexity and high algorithm flexibility than either software-programmable
processors or dedicated ASICs. In fact, almost all major processor manufacturers
including Fujitsu (with their 86k line of programmable processors), Motorola
(with their application specific programmable DSP processors) and LSI Logic
are offering a comprehensive line of application specific adaptive processors
that preserve all of the advantages of the special purpose ASICs while
retaining the cost and flexibility afforded by the general purpose processors.
In this talk, I will present a coarse grain application specific adaptive
processor architecture that has a low reconfiguration overhead, yields
high reconfiguration rates and is adaptive in the presence of faults in
the system. I will then discuss important issues and constraints that need
to be considered while implementing adaptive processors for classes of
applications. Finally, I will focus on computer aided design algorithms
that automate the translation of high-level descriptions of algorithms
into application specific adaptive processors.
Luis Gravano
gravano@cs.columbia.edu