Computer has evolved rapidly during the past several decades in terms of
its implementation technology; it's architecture, however, has not changed dramatically
since the von Neumann computer(control flow) model emerged in the 1940s. One
main reason is that the performance for this kind of computers was able to satisfy
the requirement of most users. Another reason maybe that the engineers who designed
them are more familiar with this model. However, recent solutions to the problem
of parallelizing sequential nature instructions on a von Neumann machine complicate
both the compiler and the controller design. Therefore, another computer model, namely
the data flow model, has regained attention since this model of computation exposes
parallelism inherent in the program naturally.
In terms of implementation methodology, we currently use synchronous sequential
logic, which is clock controlled for synchronization within circuits. This design
philosophy becomes hard to follow due to the occurrence of clock skew as the clock
frequency goes higher and higher. One way to eliminate these clock related problems
is to use the self-timed(asynchronous) implementation methodology. It features advantages
such as free of clock-skew, low power consumption, composibility and so forth.
Since data flow(data driven) computation model provides the execution of instructions
asynchronously, it is natural to implement a data flow processor using self-timed circuits.
In this thesis, micro pipelines, one of the self-timed implementation methodology,
is used to implement a preliminary version of general purpose static data flow
processor. Some interesting observations will be addressed in this thesis. An example
program of general difference recursive equation is given to test the correctness and
performance of this processor. We hope to gain more insight on how to design and
implement self-timed systems in the future. / Graduation date: 1994
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/35635 |
| Date | 24 September 1993 |
| Creators | Chang, Chih-ming |
| Contributors | Lu, Shih-Lien |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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