THE VLSI IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SIGMA ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

A description is given of a parallel computer architecture called SIGMA and its implementation as a full custom design in VLSI technology. The architecture is highly parallel, consisting of many simple processing elements heavily interconnected. The processing elements perform threshold computations on thousands of inputs. This architecture was inspired by research under the "neural network" banner and retains the highly interconnected nature of such systems. However, it differs from them in some key areas. The SIGMA architecture is digital, it provides greater functionality with respect to the type of threshold comparison done, the connection weights remain static for the duration of a problem, and its processing is deterministic. Communication between units is in single bit values which are heavily multiplexed to reduce the amount of physical interconnect and pinout.