A study on interconnection networks of the Dynamically Reconfigurable Processor Array MuCCRA

A dynamically reconfigurable processor array (DRPA) is consisting of a number of PEs, and its interconnection of PE array gives a large effect on the total area, energy and performance. However, there is no study of DRPAs focused on their PE network. In this paper, we designed four types of DRPAs based on MuCCRA, developed in MuCCRA(multi-core configurable reconfigurable architecture) project. They have different topologies, which are direct interconnection, island-style interconnection and two kinds of hybrid interconnection. They are evaluated using three different PE array sizes. As a result, a MuCCRA with hybrid network, which has the highest degree of connectivity, is able to execute DCT faster than the other MuCCRAs, but requires more area by 20% than MuCCRA with direct network. On energy consumption, MuCCRA with direct links consumes 7 times more energy at maximum than island-style-interconnected MuCCRAs.