M3T: Morphable Multithreaded Memory Tiles

摘要

The Morphable Multithreaded Memory Tiles (M3T) system proves that a polymorphous computing system polymorphous hardware and a complete polymorphous software environment is orders of magnitude more cost effective than conventional computing systems. The cornerstone of M3T is two main contributions: (1) architectural support that enables the processor cores and memories in an M3T chip to reconfigure at run time, allowing the processing architecture to morph or reconfigure itself into different 'architectural templates' such as VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word), MIMD (Multiple Instruction Stream and Multiple Data Stream), or Streaming engine or even some combination of them as a program executes; and (2) a complete polymorphous software includes synthesis tools for high-level design, a polymorphous low level compiler and code generator, and morphware fragments. TaskScalar is an architectural template where the processing components work in a tightly-executing very fine-grain tasks speculatively. Some of M3T's polymorphous features have been tech- transferred to the IBM Blue Gene/C (Cyclops) chip. To ensure commercial viability and defense interest, the primary den application domain for the M3T system is speech processing.