Mathstar offers family of FPOAs

By Control Engineering Staff September 14, 2006

Mathstar introduces a family of field programmable object arrays (FPOAs), which work at a higher level (2-4 times greater performance) than field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). An FPOA is a two-dimensional array of silicon objects, which are 16-bit configurable machines, such as a multiply-accumulate unit, or register file. Both the silicon object behavior and the interconnection among silicon objects are field-programmable. The MOA1400D family of 1 GHz FPOAs combines high-performance and re-programmability to meet the needs of a wide variety of applications, including machine vision, image processing, and test and measurement.

According to the company, FPOAs operate deterministically at 1 GHz and therefore do not
suffer from timing closure delays. The MOA1400D family of FPOAs provides 256 arithmetic logic units (ALU), 80 register files (RF), and 64 multiply accumulators (MAC). The 1 GHz interconnect
fabric joins each silicon object to the array.

Array object programming features include:

  • An 8-instruction state machine per ALU, with each state programmable with over 20 instructions;

  • Register files configurable to 64 entries of 16 + 4 bit data or 32 entries of 32 + 8 bit data;

  • A 16 x 16 single cycle throughput multiplier;

  • 32 bit intermediate result, signed or unsigned;

  • 40 bit accumulator, 256 accumulations before overflow;

  • 12 independent internal RAM blocks of 7.3 KB, each with two-cycle access up to 1 GHz; and

  • 87.5 KB maximum memory size.

C.G. Masi , senior editor,
Control Engineering


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