Impressum last update June 2001

KressArray homepage   A Trailblazing Technology

Reconfigurable Computing goes into every application

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The KressArray

along with itst mapper DPSS (A Datapath Synthesis System) for the rDPA (reconfigurable Datapath Array)  is a generalization of the systolic array.  The systolic array is a coarse grain pipe network. During the 80ies and later the research in systolic arrays had been dominated by mathematicians. Until the mid' 90ies the progress of this area had stalled because of the mind set of a typical mathematician. For a hammer almost everything in the world looks like a nail. For a typical mathematician almost everything in the world  has looked like an algebraic problem, so that all  systolic array synthesis methods of that time have been based on linear projection, so that systolic array usage had been restricted to applications with strictly regular data dependencies. These classical systhesis methods have yielded only uniform arrays permitting only linear pipes .

It has been the achievement of Rainer Kress to discard such algebraic synthesis methods, and, to replace it with simulated annealing [x]. By this fundamental paradigm shift Rainer Kress has removed the restrictions (see above) by supporting also non-uniform arrays including also any wild wild structures of the pipe network like, for instance, with  zig-zag,  spiral, fork/join and any free form pipes. By this generalization it makes sense to have reconfigurable pipe networks: rDPAs (reconfigurable Datapath Arrays).

The KressArray Xplorer

is a Reconfigurable Array Design Space Explorer (Platform Space Explorer) and Application Mapper supporting the generic reconfigurable Kress Array family,

Running the Xplorer from your Netscape Navigator: Xplorer |

Xplorer description | ALE-X language description | Xputer software pages

mainly covering X-C compiler and DPSS (CoDe-X had been planned) (Java activation needed)

ALE-X and DPSS literature:

Thomas Molketin: Analyse, Transformation und Verteilung arithmetischer
und logischer Ausdruecke auf die rekonfigurierbare Datenpfadarchitektur; Diplomarbeit, Universitaet Kaiserslautern, 1995 - ask for a copy

R. Kress et al.:  A Datapath Synthesis System for the Reconfigurable Datapath Architecture; Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference, ASP-DAC'95, Nippon Convention Center, Makuhari, Chiba, Japan, Aug. 29 - Sept. 1, 1995 - pdf

Rainer Kress: A Fast Reconfigurable ALU for Xputers, Ph. D. Dissertation, Universitaet Kaiserslautern 1996  --  ask for brochure

Literature on coarse grained reconfigurable architectures and design space exploration:

• R. Hartenstein (embedded tutorial): A Decade of Reconfigurable Computing:  a Visionary Retrospective; DATE 2001, pdf
• R. Hartenstein (invited embedded tutorial): Coarse Grain Reconfigurable Architectures; ASP-DAC 2001)  - pdf

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