Configurable computer systems can support dataflow computing

This work presents a practical implementation of a uni-processor system design. This design, named D^2-CPU, satisfies the pure data-driven paradigm, which is a radical alternative to the conventional von Neumann paradigm and exploits the instruction-level parallelism to its full extent. The D^2-CPU uses the natural flow of the program, dataflow, by minimizing redundant instructions like fetch, store, and write back. This leads to a design with the better performance, lower power consumption and efficient use of the on-chip resources. This extraordinary performance is the result of a simple, pipelined and superscalar architecture with a very wide data bus and a completely out of order execution of instructions. This creates a program counter less, distributed controlled system design with the realization of intelligent memories. Upon the availability of data, the instructions advance further in the memory hierarchy and ultimately to the execution units by themselves, instead of having the CPU fetch the required instructions from the memory as in controlled flow processors. This application (data) oriented execution process is in contrast to application ignorant CPUs in conventional machines. The D^2-CPU solves current architectural challenges and puts into practice a pure data-driven microprocessor. This work employs an FPGA implementation of the D^2-CPU to prove the practicability of the data-driven computer paradigm using configurable logic. A relative analysis at the end confirms its superiority in performance, resource utilization and ease of programming over conventional CPUs.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering - (M.S.)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Year

2004

Author dc:creator

• Sathe, Anish Arvind

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sotirios Ziavras
• Edwin Hou
• Alexandros V. Gerbessiotis

• Computer architecture
• Dataflow computing
• Data driven paradigm
• Electrical and Electronics

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses/530

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.njit.edu:theses-1529