Optimizing time and space multiplexed computation in a dynamically reconfigurable processor

Abstract

One of the characteristics of our coarse-grained dynamically reconfigurable processor is that it uses the same operational resource for both control-intensive and dataintensive code segments. We maximize throughput from the knowledge of high-level synthesis under timing constraints. Because the optimal clock speeds for both code segments are different, a dynamic frequency control is introduced to shorten the total execution time. A state transition controller (STC) that handles the control step can change the clock speed for every cycle. For control-intensive code segments, the STC delay is shortened by a rollback mechanism, which looks ahead to the next control step and rolls back if a different control step is actually selected. For the data-intensive code segments, the delay is shortened by fully synchronized synthesis. Experimental results show that throughputs have increased from 18% to 56% with the combination of these optimizations. A chip was fabricated with our 40-nm low-power process technology.