Xputer Animation

This page illustrates the principles of the Xputer paradigm. To view the animation you need the plugin Shockwave from Macromedia. The size of this animation is only 20KB, therefore the time to download should be short. The purpose of this page is to illustrate the importance of using data sequencers (instead of an instruction sequencer).

As an example the Fast Fourier Transformation is chosen. We are aware that the animation does not really show a Fast Fourier Transformation, but only the principles. The way of execution correlates the Fast Fourier Transformation.

For simplicity the operations are shown in sequence. Usually the executions of an Xputers are pipelined.

To control the animation there are 3 buttons and a slider.

• The slider is to set the speed of the animation
• The first button is to restart the animation. This is necessary, when the animation was stopped for single step operation.
• The button in the middle is to stop the automatic animation for single step mode.
• The lower button is to perform one animation step in the single step mode.

Explanation of the animation.

The animation starts, with filling the data memory with random numbers. For calculations three scan windows are required. The large 2-by-2 scan window holds the input data and the two 1-by-1 scan windows store the results after calculations. For Fast Fourier Transformation the follwing formulas have to be computed:

x1 = a + w * b

x2 = a - w * b

Obviously the term (w*b) is only computed once. The follwing describes the sequence of animated steps:

1. The data sequencer positions the scan windows.
2. The data sequencer sequences the input data to the smart interface.
3. Since the reconfigurable ALU (rALU) has parallel access to the smart interface the term (w*b) is computed in one time step.
4. The rALU calculates the sum and the difference and places the results in the smart interface.
5. The data sequencer sequences the results from the scan window to the data memory.

These steps are iterated until the computation of the Fast Fourier Transformation is complete.

For further information please refer to the related FAQ-Page or to:

A. Ast, J. Becker, R.W. Hartenstein, et. al.: Data-procedural Languanges for FPL-based Machines; 4rd Int. Workshop On Field Programmable Logic And Applications, FPL'94, Prague, September 7-10, 1994, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, 1994.

Shockwave needed for this animation.

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© Copyright 1997, Xputer Laboratory, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany - Webmaster