Polymorphic architectures: from media processing to supercomputing

: This paper reveals the evolution of the polymorphic architectures in the context of ever increasing computational demands of the user applications and the need for formal architectural ion covering the emerging reconfigurable technologies. The base architecture presented is the Molen polymorphic processor - a synergism between a general purpose processor (GPP) and a reconfigurable accelerator. Its operation is based on the co-processor architectural paradigm and employs the concept of the traditional microcode control. Experiments with popular media applications, such as MJPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 suggest that a Molen architecture can provide speedups closely approaching the theoretically maximum obtainable figures, determined by Amdahl's law. However, while media applications are predominantly integer based, scientific applications, typically run on supercomputers, rely on floating-point arithmetic. Therefore, a natural evolution of the Molen platforms towards supercomputing, i.e., ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: COMPSYSTECH
• Authors: Georgi Kuzmanov
• Keywords: COMPSYSTECH 2009, Hardware, Media Applications, Molen, Polymorphic Architectures