Advanced flexible processor functional

The Advanced Flexible Processor is a unique and powerful architecture providing an extremely high degree of flexibility and cost-effectiveness. It consists of 16 relatively autonomous functional units interconnected by a power 16 x 18 port, crossbar interconnect. Each of the data paths interconnected by the crossbar is 16 bits wide Table 1 describes the functional unit breakdown of the Advanced Flexible Processor. A conceptualized functional organization of the AFP is shown in Figure 4. 

Figure 4. Functional organization of the advanced flexible processor.

The machine cycle time of the Advanced Flexible Processor is 20 nanoseconds Every functional unit can provide results every 20 nanoseconds Thus, 50 million 16-bit multiplies, 200 million 16-bit data memory references, and 100 million 16-bit adds or subtracts, etc. can be performed every second The maximum operational speed of the Advanced Flexible Processor, therefore, is 800 million operations per second when all 16 functional units are executing. 

System arrays of Advanced Flexible Processors are linked together and synchronized via facilities provided by the ring port functional units Data elements 16 bits wide, along with 12 bits of control information, are passed between ring ports on adjacent AFP s. The control information provides all of the associated addressing information to define the single processor or subset of system processors to which the message is to be sent ... 

Special-purpose functional units can replace existing functional units within the Advanced Flexible Processor, allowing processor capabilities to be tailored to the precise application requirements. Modular system construction allows compute power modularity thus, processing systems can be cost-effectively tailored to the users individual requirements. 

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