ALFA: a static data flow architecture

Abstract

The authors present the ALFA architecture, a data flow machine with 16384 functional units (FUs) grouped in 128 clusters. ALFA is based on the Backus FFP computational model and uses the static data flow execution model. This machine's behavior is deterministic and asynchronous. Consequently, after compile time, instructions and data are no longer related. In this machine, even though its behavior is deterministic, no control token is generated during the computation, but only data tokens. Furthermore, during the execution phase, no memory is required to contain the partial results exchanged among FUs. A cluster with 128 FUs has been simulated, and some results are presented.<>