A COMPUTATIONAL MODEL FOR STATIC DATA-FLOW MACHINES

Computer architects have been constantly looking for new approaches to design high-performance machines. Data flow and VLSI offer two mutually supportive approaches towards a promising design for future super-computers. When very high speed computations are needed, data flow machines may be relied upon as an adequate solution in which extremely parallel processing is achieved. This paper presents a formal analysis for data flow machines. Moreover, the following three machines are considered: (1) MIT static data flow machine; (2) TI's DDP static data flow machine; (3) LAU data flow machine. These machines are investigated by making use of a reference model. The contributions of this paper include: (1) Developing a Data Flow Random Access Machine model (DFRAM), for first time, to serve as a formal modeling tool. Also, by making use of this model one can calculate the time cost of various static data machines, as well as the performance of these machines. (2) Constructing a practical Data Flow Simulator (DFS) on the basis of the DFRAM model. Such DFS is modular and portable and can be implemented with less sophistication. The DFS is used not only to study the performance of the underlying data flow machines but also to verify the DFRAM model.