A parallel control computer structure for complex high speed applications

Abstract

With high speed control applications it is often very difficult to achieve the aspired timing of the control algorithm using just one processor. This is true especially if the system is complex or very large. In this paper we discuss advantages and disadvantages of a new system architecture using many processors of which each one is specialised for one part of the algorithm. A tailorable parallel computer architecture which we developed to cope with the problems of parallelisation of control algorithms is presented. Finally examples from the field of robotics and the performance of the prototype computer is presented.