A 40 MFLOPS 32-bit floating-point processor

Abstract

A 40 MFLOPS (million floating-point operations per second), 32-bit floating-point processor (FP) for a single-board data-driven processor is developed using a pipeline configuration called the elastic pipeline structure. Because there is no need to add controls for pipeline flushing by virtue of the data-driven processing principle, it is possible to employ extensively subdivided pipeline stages. The elastic mode of data transfer between pipeline stages and distributed execution controls along the pipeline result in minimum deterioration of the inherent logic switching speed. The structure of the FP is shown together with details of the ALU (arithmetic logic unit) block. The fabrication process and chip specifications are summarized.<>