CADCS and Vector Processing

Abstract

The field of Computer Aided Design in Control Systems has become a major topic of research in modern control engineering. Current CADCS packages cover the whole spectrum of classical and modern control theory and are being continuously updated with the latest advances in numerical control algorithms. As a result todays control engineers have access to many powerful and advanced control techniques to meet the still increasing demands from the industry. However the actual implementation of these modern techniques is still very much limited, especially in time-critical on-line situations, by the physical limits of todays sequential processors. The arrival of new computer architectures and technologies, such as vector computers and parallel processing, can offer a spectacular breakthrough to the current computing limitations. In this paper it is demonstrated that a considerable speedup is obtained when vector processing is applied to two classical but powerful long-range predictive control techniques; namely Model Algorithmic Control and Dynamic Matrix Control.