Design and implementation of a parallel image processor chip for a SIMD array processor

Abstract

This paper presents the design and implementation of a sliding memory plane (SliM) image processor chip to build a mesh-connected SIMD architecture called a SliM array processor. The SliM image processor chip consists of 5/spl times/5 processing elements (PEs) connected by a mesh topology. A set of SliM image processor chips can form the SliM array processor. Due to the idea of sliding, that is, overlapping inter-PE communication with computation, the SliM image processor can greatly reduce the inter-PE communication overhead, a significant disadvantage of existing SIMD array processors. In addition, using the by-passing path provides eight-way connectivity even with four physical links. This paper addresses architectures of the SliM image processor chip, the design of an instruction set, and implementation issues. The chip has 55255 gates and twenty-five 128/spl times/9-bit SRAM modules, and was simulated at 18 MHz for the worst case conditions, and will actually run at a higher clock rate. The package type is the 144 pin MQFP. We conduct the performance evaluation of the chip that shows a significant improvement.