We are currently developing an array processor containing multiple simple DSPs, targeting high performance and low power consumption.

I am interested in three areas in processor systems which I think will be active research topics these years (hope as long as possible, hehe).

First is about the energy efficiency design. Not only for the battery based portable systems, but also for the traditional unportable systems, power has become one of the most important (or maybe the most important) parameters in modern VLSI designs.

Second is about the parallel computer architecture. Dual-core Intanium from Intel and HP, dual-core SPARC from Sun, and eight-core CELL from IBM, SONY and Torshiba are appearing this year. Increasing clock speed is becoming so difficult and seems parallelism will be the next focus.

Third is about the configurable and adaptive computation. Traditional resource fixed processor architecture (fixed clock speed, fixed voltage, fixed memory size, etc.) cosumes extra power consupmption which can be saved if we can change the processor parameters according to the situation. Adaptivly tuning the processor resource is an attractive method.

I hope I can touch some or all of these areas in these years.