ASP modules: cost-effective building-blocks for real-time DSP systems

Abstract

ASP (Associative String Processor) architecture and support software provide the base technology for the development of versatile, replaceable, and highly compact building-blocks for the simple construction of modular real-time DSP systems, offering step-function improvements in cost-performance, application flexibility, reliability, and ease of maintenance. Based on a fully programmable and fault-tolerant homogeneous computational architecture, emerging from research at Brunel University and being developed by Aspex Microsystems, ASP modules offer cost-effective support of a particularly wide range of DSP applications, by mapping application data structures to a common string representation supporting content-addressing, parallel processing and a reconfigurable inter-processor communication network. Moreover, by exploiting state-of-the-art microelectronics and packaging technologies, the ASP modules achieve processor packing-densities which are more ussually associated with memory components. Indeed, the ASP has been designed to benefit from the inevitable VLSI-to-ULSI-to-WSI technological trend, with a fully integrated simply scalable, and defect/fault-tolerant processor interconnection strategy. The architecture, software, and implementation of ASP modules are discussed, and the paper indicates that the potential of a peak performance of 1 TOPS (i.e., 1E12 operations (e.g., 12-bit adds) per second) with an input-output bandwidth of 3,200 Mbytes/second could be achieved with only 10 ASP modules, within less than a cubic-foot, dissipating 1 KW, and for less than $1M.