Implementation of self-organizing feature maps in reconfigurable hardware

Abstract

In this chapter we discuss an implementation of self-organizing feature maps in reconfigurable hardware. Based on the universal rapid prototyping system RAPTOR2000 a hardware accelerator for self-organizing feature maps has been developed. Using state of the art Xilinx FPGAs, RAPTOR2000 is capable of emulating hardware implementations with a complexity of more than 15 million system gates. RAPTOR2000 is linked to its host-a standard personal computer or workstation-via the PCI bus. For the simulation of self-organizing feature maps a module has been designed for the RAPTOR2000 system, that embodies an FPGA of the Xilinx Virtex (-E) series and optionally up to 128 MBytes of SDRAM. A speed-up of up to 190 is achieved with five FPGA modules on the RAPTOR2000 system compared to a software implementation on a state of the art personal computer for typical applications of self-organizing feature maps. © 2006 Springer.