High Performance and Energy Efficient Many-core DSP Systems: An Asynchronous Array of Simple Processors

This book investigates the architecture design, physical implementation, result evaluation, and feature analysis of a many-core processor for DSP applications. The system is composed of a 2-D array of simple single-issue programmable processors interconnected by a reconfigurable mesh network, and processors operate completely asynchronously with respect to each other in a Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous fashion. The processor is called Asynchronous Array of simple Processors (AsAP). A 6×6 array has been fabricated in a 0.18 µm CMOS technology. The physical design concerns timing issues for robust implementations, and takes full advantages of their potential scalability. Each processor occupies 0.66 mm², is fully functional at a clock rate of 520¿540 MHz under 1.8 V, and dissipates 94 mW while the clock is 100% active. The system is also easily scalable, and is well- suited to future fabrication technologies.