The White Dwarf: a high-performance application-specific processor

The design and implementation of a high-performance special-purpose processor, called the White Dwarf, or accelerating finite-element analysis algorithms is presented. The White Dwarf CPU contains two Am2935 32-bit floating-point processors and one Am29332 32-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU), and use...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wolfe, A., Breternitz, M., Stephens, C., Ting, A.L., Kirk, D.B., Bianchini, R.P., Shen, J.P.
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Acceleration
Algorithm design and analysis
Application specific processors
Computer architecture
Finite element methods
Floating-point arithmetic
Logic
Process design
Sun
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Summary:The design and implementation of a high-performance special-purpose processor, called the White Dwarf, or accelerating finite-element analysis algorithms is presented. The White Dwarf CPU contains two Am2935 32-bit floating-point processors and one Am29332 32-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU), and uses a wide-instruction-word architecture in which the application algorithm is directly implemented in microcode. The entire system is VME-bus compatible and interfaces with a Sun 3/160 host. The system's potential peak performance is 20 MFLOPS (million floating-point operations per second) a sustained computation rate in excess of 15 MFLOPS is expected. A potential speedup of between one and two orders of magnitude is possible. With a fully populated memory subsystem, the White Dwarf can accommodate finite-element problems involving up to half a million nodes. The system is designed using an approach called application-specific processor design (ASPD). A retargetable compiler has been developed which is capable of generating highly parallel and efficient code for the White Dwarf and other processors with similar architecture. System debug/integration is in progress; a highly useful system is expected.< >
DOI:10.1109/ISCA.1988.5231