Microprogrammed Arrays

The logical organization of a programmable cellular array is presented and discussed. This array is a two-dimensional array of identical cells, each of which can be programmed to one of 12 functional states. It is shown that by appropriate selection of the cell states, a useful class of microprograms can be realized with the array. The realization of a microprogram consists of two steps. First, each of the microinstructions of the program are implemented in a row of the array. Second, the control structure of the microprogram is realized by using some of the cells at the left end of each row to generate the control signals for the row.