CHAMELEON CHIP ABSTRACT

A reconfigurable processor is a microprocessor with erasable hardware that can rewire itself dynamically. This allows the chip to adapt effectively to the programming tasks demanded by the particular software they are interfacing with at any given time. Ideally, the reconfigurable processor can transform itself from a video chip to a central processing unit (CPU) to a graphics chip, for example, all optimized to allow applications to run at the highest possible speed. These chips are like providing a "chip on demand." In practical terms, this ability can translate to immense flexibility in terms of device functions. For example, a single device could serve as both a camera and a tape recorder (among numerous other possibilities): you would simply download the desired software and the processor would reconfigure itself to optimize performance for that function. According to a recent Red Herring magazine article, that type of device versatility may be available by 2003. Reconfigurable processor chip usually contains several parallel processing computational units known as functional blocks. These functional blocks are connected in all the possible way. While reconfiguring the chip, the connections inside the functional blocks and the connections in between the functional blocks are changing. That means when a particular software is loaded the present hardware design is erased and a new hardware design is generated by making a particular number of connections active while making others idle. This will define the optimum hardware configuration for that particular software. The key to the design is the small size of each processing element. The smallest segments of the chip can be defined with just 50 bits of software code, so the entire chip can be reprogrammed with just 50,000 bits of software description. It takes just 20 microseconds to reconfigure the entire processing array. Reconfigurable processors are currently available from Chameleon Systems, Billions of Operations (BOPS), and PACT (Parallel Array Computing Technology). Among those only Chameleon is providing a design environment, which allows customers to convert their algorithms to hardware configuration by themselves

Rererences:

Wei Qin Presentation , Oct 2000 (The part of the presentation regarding CS2000 is covered in this page) IEEE conference on Tele-communication, 2001. WEBSITES http://www.chameleon systems.com http://www.thinkdigit.com http://www.ieee.org http://www.entecollege.com http://www.iec.org http://www.quicksilver technologies.com http://www.xilinx.com

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