A DESIGN METHODOLOGY FOR VERY LARGE ARRAY PROCESSORS-PART 2: PACUBE VLSI ARRAYS

Abstract

The types of functional VLSI chips needed for general and special purpose (computationally intensive) applications are wide ranging, Hence, to reduce the turn-around time of these VLSI chips, mask/field programmable PLAs, gate arrays SLAs and FPGAs are available. However these VLSI arrays are unsuitable for designing ultrahigh performance special purpose VLSI chips. There is a strong need for developing a suitable mask programmable VLSI structures exclusively for designing ultrahigh performance and cost-effective special purpose systems. For this purpose, a macro cell based mask programmable Pacube (PA3—Programmable Array of Array Adders) VLSI array is proposed in this paper. These arrays can be mask programmed for building cost-effective super computing VLSI functional units. Another important feature is the architecture of the macro-cell, which is designed in such a way that the functional units corresponding to the G-set equations when mapped on the macro-cell arrays possess identical data flow control. This leads to a highly simplified control design for executing complex computations.