Implementation of Compute Intensive Algorithms on Software Configurable Processor

Abstract

Software configurable processors (SCP) implement compute intensive applications very efficiently on the special onchip configurable hardware. The SCP by Stretch Inc. converts the computeheavy algorithms into custom instructions, called extension instructions (EI) which run on the onchip logic. The Processor interleaves the EI's between regular instructions and the onchip hardware executes the algorithm in parallel, accelerating the application. This results in a performance gain of more than order of magnitude over an unaccelerated processor. This paper explains the implementation of two compute intensive algorithms on Stretch SCP, namely (i) colour space conversion and (ii) histogram equalisation. The repeated processing required by these algorithms is made easier by the SCP which allows packing of multiple pixels into a vector. The vector processing makes SCP achieve high throughput. Profiling an application identifies computeintensive spots in the program, which are computed on the onchip hardware by issuing EI's.