Asynchronous Array of Simple Processors (AsAP) Project

Asynchronous Array of Simple Processors (AsAP) project

"You know you have achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Members of the VCL are currently focused on the circuits, functional units, architecture, interconnection network, algorithms, and applications for a high-performance and energy-efficient processing system targeting computationally-demanding multi-task DSP system applications. The single-chip processing system is comprised of a large number of fine-grain asynchronously-operating programmable processors connected by a reconfigurable 2-dimensional mesh network.

We have designed a 0.18 μm CMOS chip that was fabricated during the summer of 2005. Early testing in the fall of 2005 has shown it is fully functional! We believe it is the highest clock rate fabricated processor designed in any university. A 13 mm x 13 mm chip utilizing the exact same design in 90 nm CMOS would contain more than 1000 processors and be capable of more than 1 Tera-op/sec peak performance.

Details of the chip were presented at/in: ISSCC, ISVLSI, HotChips, ICCD, IEEE MICRO, EURASIP, IEEE TVLSI, IEEE JSSC, ISCAS, and Symp on VLSI Circuits. A complete list of publications can be found here.

Key features of the AsAP processor

Several key features of the AsAP processor enable its high performance, high energy efficiency, and efficient use of silicon area. These features include:

a chip multi-processor architecture to achieve high performance;
small memories and a simple architecture in each processor to provide high energy efficiency;
a globally asynchronous locally synchronous (GALS) clocking style to simplify clock design, provide easy scaling into future deep submicron technologies, and increase energy efficiency; and
nearest neighbor communication to avoid long global wires which are good for future fabrication technologies.

Architecture (First Generation)

The first generation AsAP processor contains 36 identical processors with independent clock domains. Each processor is a reduced complexity programmable DSP with small memories, which can dramatically increase system area efficiency and energy efficiency. Each processor can receive data from any two neighbors and send data to any of its four neighbors. The block diagram of AsAP processor is shown below.

AsAP 1 chip

Below is the micrograph of our single-chip 6x6 AsAP processor array.

Chip design

We used a number of CAD tools from Cadence and Synopsys for our chip design. This page contains an overview of our CAD tool flow including progress and issues. Here are several issues we considered before the tape out.

Applications

Several DSP tasks and applications such as FFT, JPEG core encoder and 802.11a/802.11g wireless transmitter are mapped onto AsAP processor. 802.11a/802.11g implementation using 22 processors is shown below. It consumes 407 mW at 300 MHz and achieve 30% of 54 Mb/s performance. These results are around 10 times higher performance and 35x - 75x lower energy dissipation than 8-way VLIW TI C62x (according one implementation reported at ICC02).

Results (First Generation)

AsAP processor operates at 475 MHz; and each processor dissipates 32 mW while executing applications, 84 mW while 100% active, and 144 mW worst-case at 1.8 V. Most of AsAP's area (66%) is for the core which is a high area utilization. Each processor occupies 0.66 mm², which is more than 20 times smaller than the other traditional processors such as ARM. AsAP processor also achieves more than 5 times higher performance density and energy efficiency compared with others, as shown at below.

Development boards

Work has begun on two development boards: one for high-speed AsAP array emulation on an FPGA, and the other to host our planned CMOS chip. Key features for both boards include:

On-board D/A converter(s)
On-board A/D converter(s)
Simple interface to a workstation for programming/configuration
Simple interface to a workstation for data in and data out (may utilize the same interface using on-board memory for buffering)
FPGA-only board: Sufficient on-board RAM for future non-AsAP projects
FPGA-only board: Sufficient CLBs/slices for at least 9 AsAP processors, ideal goal is 19, 20, or 22 (802.11a transmitter)

Information on the AsAP version 1 development board can be found at: http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/vcl/asap/asap_v1/asap_ver1.shtml.

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by Intel Corporation, UC MICRO, the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0430090 and CAREER grant No. 0546907, and a UCD Faculty Research Grant. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

VCL | ECE Dept. | UC Davis

Last update: May 6, 2008
Keywords: electrical engineering, computer engineering, university, academic, department, group, lab, laboratory, research development, chip, VLSI, CMOS, circuit, low power, energy efficient, FFT, DCT, viterbi, FIR, IIR, compression, communication, coding, convolution, correlation, encryption, image, video, JPEG, multimedia, wireless, OFDM, radar, sonor, medical imaging, MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, biological imaging, 802.11a, 802.11g, wireless LAN, transmitter, receiver.