Extending the CMU Warp Machine with a Boundary Processor

Abstract

A high-performance systolic array computer called Warp has been designed by CMU and is currently under construction. The full scale machine has a systolic array of 10 or more linearly connected cells, each of which is a programmable processor capable of performing 10 million floating-point operations per second (10 MFLOPS). By the end of 1985 the first full scale machine will be operational. Low-level vision processing for robots and autonomous vehicles are among the first applications of the machine. This paper describes a new boundary processor to be attached to an end of the linear systolic array in Warp. Extending Warp with this boundary processor will substantially enhance the performance and applicability of the machine. The extended machine will be efficient for new application areas such as solution of linear systems of equations and adaptive signal processing.