A VLSI array for ensemble operations

Embedding simple switches in a regular VLSI array has been a mainstream effort in the wafer-scale integration fault-tolerant system design. With only a little additional circuitry, these switches can be upgraded into a shuffle bus which provides not only direct data routings but also global communications. Based on the same shuffle-bus architecture, three reconfiguration schemes can be derived. With such flexibility, one can devise a combinational scheme to cope more dynamically with the various static and transient errors. Fundamental bus operations, such as shuffle interconnections on two-dimensional shuffle buses, are systematically derived. This modular array architecture, being suitable for vector and systolic-type processings, can be viewed as an ensemble operator and programmed like a conventional two-operand operator