Citation: G. Aloisio, V. Di Lecce, A Rest Module based multiprocessor system for signal processing, Proceedings of Mini and Microcomputers and their applications, Sant Feliu-Spain, pp. 194-199, 1985.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to propose a highly parallel architecture based on 'REST' type processor elements (RPE) and designed to make good use of Very Large Scale Integration technology. 'REST' is a single-bit versatile module easily 'concatenable' allowing immediate implementation both of simple structures (arbitrary word length processors) and of the most complex ones (arrays, multiprocessors. fault-tolerant structures. dynamic architectures). The REST architecture derives from that developed in the SINBIT project first presented in 1979: the elementary cell was in SINBIT, a Single-Bit Processor (SEIP) designed for fault-tolerant structures. The generalization of the basic ideas, in order to improve the performance and flexibility of the SHP led to the design of the REST (Restructurable Processor). A 'REST' simulator, written in Pascal, to be used both as a preliminary step to-wards the VLSI implementation of the module and es a hardware/firmware 'development system' specialized for 'REST' based architectures has already been realized. Some of internal RPE sub-functions are also made in TTL technology and tested. The architecture is suitable for signal processing and our interest is to use it for 'SAR' (Synthetic Aperture Radar) processing. In this paper a system realized with 512 RPE's is presented: the special structure of the single RPE, each provided with the proper control firmware, allows ,to specialize, in the boot-strap phase, the RPE functionality. so it is easy to implement dynamically both SIND and MIND structures. The whole system. the I/O and the bootstrap procedures are described. As an example of the use of this structure the algorithm for computing the product of a 512x512 matrix by a vector of 512 elements is also shown; the execution time for this algor-ithm is about 1 ms.
Keyword: rest sinbib processing element