Parallel computations on reconfigurable meshes

Abstract

The mesh with reconfigurable bus is presented as a model of computation. The reconfigurable mesh captures salient features from a variety of sources, including the CAAPP, CHiP, polymorphic-torus network, and bus automation. It consists of an array of processors interconnected by a reconfigurable bus system that can be used to dynamically obtain various interconnection patterns between the processors. A variety of fundamental data-movement operations for the reconfigurable mesh are introduced. Based on these operations, algorithms that are efficient for solving a variety of problems involving graphs and digitized images are also introduced. The algorithms are asymptotically superior to those previously obtained for the aforementioned reconfigurable architectures, as well as to those previously obtained for the mesh, the mesh with multiple broadcasting, the mesh with multiple buses, the mesh-of-trees, and the pyramid computer. The power of reconfigurability is illustrated by solving some problems, such as the exclusive OR, more efficiently on the reconfigurable mesh than is possible on the programmable random-access memory (PRAM).< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>