Design reuse by modularity: a scalable dynamical (re)configurable multiprocessor system

Abstract

We present a scalable, low cost multiprocessor system, which is used in the area of measurement, regulation, controlling and soft computing. The system is an example of extremely modular hardware/software design. Modular in this context means that we can easily change or optimize individually the components in the system for a given problem. One of the most important aspects of our multiprocessor system is the fact that the user can dynamically change the communication topology by software 'on-the-fly'. Thus, the hardware can be (re)configured during operation in less than 1 ms. By this, the CPUs in the multiprocessor system can communicate directly without any invention of another processor preventing the typical bottleneck in parallel systems. First applications have been implemented in an embedded controller for a vote counting machine, with emphasis on high data security and high throughput.