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. Coming Soon Date Who Topic Dec. 1 Mike Jenkins Everything you always wanted to know about research funding Jan. 19 Pierre Delisle A Load Balancing Facility for Distributed Systems