PASM: A Partitionable SIMD/MIMD System for Image Processing and Pattern Recognition

PASM, a large-scale multimicroprocessor system being designed at Purdue University for image processing and pattern recognition, is described. This system can be dynamically reconfigured to operate as one or more independent SIMD and/or MIMD machines. PASM consists of a parallel computation unit, which contains N processors, N memories, and an interconnection network; Q microcontrollers, each of which controls N/Q processors; N/Q parallel secondary storage devices; a distributed memory management system; and a system control unit, to coordinate the other system components. Possible values for N and Q are 1024 and 16, respectively. The control schemes and memory management in PASM are explored. Examples of how PASM can be used to perform image processing tasks are given.