dunc@eecg.toronto.edu (Duncan Elliott) (11/22/89)
Electrical Engineering Computer Group
Cider Seminar Series
IRAM: Memory with a SIMD Processor Which Packs a Punch
by
Duncan Elliott &
Martin Snelgrove
Electrical Engineering Computer Group
University of Toronto
Time: Friday, Nov. 24, 1989, 12:05 --- Place: GB 248
The architecture which we call IRAM is a hybrid of a RAM and a
SIMD (single instruction path multiple data path) processor. A
single bit processor element (PE) is placed next to each sense
amplifier within the RAM chips. The PEs are cheap to integrate into
the memory, exploit the tremendous memory bandwidth internal to the
chip and, if used as computer main memory, can communicate with a
more conventional processor via ``shared memory''.
Using state of the art RAM technology, a desk-top workstation
equipped with 32MB of IRAM might handle 58 billion 32-bit integer
operations (analogous to 58000 MIPS) or 1.2 GFLOPS (double precision
IEEE floating point multiplications) peak. To date, a smaller
proof-of-concept IRAM has been designed and submitted for
fabrication.
This talk will focus on the IRAM architecture and how to keep
it busy. A prize will be offered to the person who can dream up a
better name for IRAM.
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