POMP or how to design a massively parallel machine with small developments

Abstract

The design of a SIMD machine is usually complex because it leads to developping an efficient Processing Element and to writing all the softwares required by the chip and the control of the machine. We propose a different approach by using an efficient 32-bit off-the-shelf processor with its software environment (compiler and assembler) and a programmable gate array for the network. It limits the development to the minimum and leads to a rather general SIMD cluster built with off-the-shelf chips which can be considered as a SIMD transputer.