A New Application-Tuned Processor Architecture for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing

Abstract

One design goal of future processors is to maximize the performance per watt. However, the performance of general purpose processors can be hardly improved by barely increasing clock frequency. This paper presents an application specific reconfigurable processor architecture which is fine tuned for high performance computing. It benefits from the application specific hardware customized to significantly improve its efficiency. In comparison with the existing work on configurable processor architectures, the proposed architecture has higher functional density and lower power consumption per inch due to its runtime partial reconfiguration ability. Moreover, it can adaptively change its architecture to further promote the average performance and feasibility for other applications.