A Vector Signal Processor based on Parallel GaAs Microprocessors

The architecture of an all gallium arsenide (GaAs) vector signal processor based on parallel GaAs 32-bit microproccessors is described. The vector processor includes a vector memory of 1 megabytes, a parallel operand bus architecture with eight parallel processing elements, and a control/scalar processor. The processing elements consist of a reduced instruction set computer with four floating-point coprocessors and local memory. This architecture has been evaluated using several benchmark programs, includinig complex FFT, complex inner product, and sort-and-merge routine. The results of this study indicate that the vector processor can perform a 1024-point complex radix-4 FFT, using 32-bit floating-point arithmetic, in 112 microseconds (350) megaflops) while consuming approximately 550 watts of power in a volume of approximately 0.1 cubic foot.