Abstract

Current processor architectures, both in the programmable and custom case, become more and more dominated by the data access bottlenecks in the cache, system bus and main memory subsystems. In order to provide sufficiently high data throughput in the emerging era of highly parallel processors where many arithmetic resources can work concurrently, novel solutions for the memory access and data transfer will have to be introduced. The crucial question we want to address is where one can expect these novel solutions to reside: will they be mainly innovative processor architecture ideas, or novel approaches in the application compiler/synthesis technology, or a mix.