Overview
Linedancer HD is a software programmable Extreme Processor, which can deliver the performance levels traditionally associated with expensive high-end FPGAs, but at a fraction of the cost.
Based around Aspex’s patented 7th generation ASProCore Associative String Processing array, Linedancer HD takes advantage of the natural parallelism present in many image and signal processing applications to perform thousands of calculations in parallel.
Unlike traditional DSPs and CPUs, which typically only process up to 8 or 16 data items in parallel, Linedancer HD contains 4,096 processing elements in a Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) configuration, allowing all 4,096 processors to calculate results in parallel.
Linedancer HD also includes many high-performance features designed to make optimum use of the available memory bandwidth, such as integrated DMA engines, multiple memory banks, and multi-channel data access to the ASProCore array.
Linedancer HD is forward compatible with ASProCore code written for the Linedancer processor, allowing programmers to benefit from the increased performance of Linedancer HD without major re-engineering.
Key benefits
- Faster time-to-market
- Lower risk
- Lower development cost
- Scalable price:performance
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Linedancer HD’s 100% software programmable model allows developers to start hardware development early in the cycle, or avoid custom hardware development altogether by using one of Aspex’s standard Accelera plug-in cards.
Unlike cumbersome FPGA design flows, Linedancer HD ’s C-based development flow allows the developer to compile, run, and debug within minutes, allowing product development to take weeks instead of months.
A software based platform allows new features to be added late in the design cycle, or even deployed in the field after products have shipped, leading to significantly reduced risk. |
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Scalable price: performance
The one-dimensional “String” topology of
ASProCore allows the processing array to be extended
across multiple chips, with an increase in performance
that is close to linear. Neighbouring chips can share
data, and Aspex’s libraries allow the programmer
to write code that is independent of the number of chips
in the system.
Straightforward C-based programming model
Linedancer HD is programmed in C, with a small number of extensions to support parallel processing. A Windows or Linux toolchain provides compilation and support in a PC-based development environment, based around the industry-standard GNU toolset.
| Note: Information on Linedancer HD is Advance Information. Specifications are subject to change without notice. |
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