A high speed dataflow processing element and its performance compared to a von Neumann mainframe

The Event Processor / 3 is a dataflow processing element designed for high performance over a range of general computing tasks. Using a multithreading technique, program parallelism is exploited by interleaving threads onto successive pipeline stages. It may also be used as an element in a multiprocessor system. This paper describes the philosophy and design of the machine, and presents the results of detailed simulations of the performance of a single processing element. This is analysed into three factors: clock period, cycles per instruction and instructions per program; and each factor is compared with the measured performance of an advanced von Neumann computer running equivalent code. It is shown that the dataflow processor compares favourably, given a reasonable degree of parallelism in the program.<>