Showing papers by "Charles E. Leiserson published in 1978"

Systolic Arrays for (VLSI).

Abstract: : A systolic system is a network of processors which rhythmically compute and pass data through the system. Physiologists use the work 'systole' to refer to the rhythmically recurrent contraction of the heart and arteries which pulses blood through the body. In a systolic computing system, the function of a processor is analogous to that of the heart. Every processor regularly pumps data in and out, each time performing some short computation, so that a regular flow of data is kept up in the network. Many basic matrix computations can be pipelined elegantly and efficiently on systolic networks having an array structure. As an example, hexagonally connected processors can optimally perform matrix multiplication. Surprisingly, a similar systolic array can compute the LU-decomposition of a matrix. These systolic arrays enjoy simple and regular communication paths, and almost all processors used in the networks are identical. As a result, special purpose hardware devices based on systolic arrays can be built inexpensively using the VLSI technology. (Author)