Ambric-architecture processors, are developed and marketed by a division of Nethra, a fabless semiconductor company

Fabless semiconductor company

A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing the fabrication or "fab" of the devices to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry...

 based in Santa Clara, California. Nethra purchased the Ambric technology in early 2009. Ambric the company was founded in 2003 and the current team, all from the original startup, is still based in Beaverton

Beaverton, Oregon

Beaverton is a city in Washington County, Oregon, United States, seven miles west of Portland in the Tualatin River Valley.As of the 2010 census, the population is 90,267. This makes it the second-largest city in the county and Oregon's sixth-largest city...

, Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

. Nethra's MPPA group produces Massively Parallel Processor Array

Massively parallel processor array

A Massively Parallel Processor Array is a type of integrated circuit which has a massively parallel array of hundreds or thousands of CPUs and RAM memories. These processors pass work to one another through a reconfigurable interconnect of channels...

 (MPPA) chips

Integrated circuit

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...

, primarily for high-performance embedded systems such as medical, imaging, video, and signal-processing.

Architecture and Programming Model

The Ambric-architecture

Computer architecture

In computer science and engineering, computer architecture is the practical art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals and the formal modelling of those systems....

 is a massively parallel distributed memory

Distributed memory

In computer science, distributed memory refers to a multiple-processor computer system in which each processor has its own private memory. Computational tasks can only operate on local data, and if remote data is required, the computational task must communicate with one or more remote processors...

 multiprocessor

Multiprocessor

Computer system having two or more processing units each sharing main memory and peripherals, in order to simultaneously process programs.Sometimes the term Multiprocessor is confused with the term Multiprocessing....

, based on the Structural Object Programming Model. Each processor is programmed in conventional Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

 (a strict subset) and/or assembly code. The hundreds of processors on the chip send data and control messages to one another through an interconnect of reconfigurable

Reconfigurability

Reconfigurability denotes the Reconfigurable Computing capability of a system, so that its behavior can be changed by reconfiguration, i. e. by loading different configware code. This static reconfigurability distinguishes between reconfiguration time and run time...

, self-synchronizing channels

Channel (communications)

In telecommunications and computer networking, a communication channel, or channel, refers either to a physical transmission medium such as a wire, or to a logical connection over a multiplexed medium such as a radio channel...

, which provide both communication and synchronization

Synchronization

Synchronization is timekeeping which requires the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. The familiar conductor of an orchestra serves to keep the orchestra in time....

. The model of computation

Model of computation

In computability theory and computational complexity theory, a model of computation is the definition of the set of allowable operations used in computation and their respective costs...

 is very similar to a Kahn process network with bounded buffers

Buffer (computer science)

In computer science, a buffer is a region of a physical memory storage used to temporarily hold data while it is being moved from one place to another. Typically, the data is stored in a buffer as it is retrieved from an input device or just before it is sent to an output device...

.

Devices and Tools

The Am2045 device has 336 32-bit

Bit

A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...

 RISC-DSP

Digital signal processor

A digital signal processor is a specialized microprocessor with an architecture optimized for the fast operational needs of digital signal processing.-Typical characteristics:...

 fixed-point processors and 336 2-kB

Kilobyte

The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...

 memories, which run at up to 300 MHz. It has an Eclipse-based

Eclipse (software)

Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...

 integrated development environment

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

 including editor, compiler, assemblers, simulator, configuration generator, source-code debugger

Debugger

A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs . The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an instruction set simulator , a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered but which...

 and video/image-processing, signal-processing, and video-codec libraries.

Power and Performance

The Am2045 delivers 0.1 (edit: was 1.0) TeraOPS (Operations Per Second) and 50 Giga-MACs (Multply-Accumulates per second) of fixed-point processing with 6-12W of power consumed (dependent on the application).

Applications

Nethra's MPPA devices are used for high-definition, 2K and 4K video compression, transcoding and analysis, image recognition, medical imaging

Medical imaging

Medical imaging is the technique and process used to create images of the human body for clinical purposes or medical science...

, signal-processing, software defined radio and other compute-intensive streaming media

Streaming media

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...

 applications, which otherwise would use FPGA, DSP

Digital signal processor

A digital signal processor is a specialized microprocessor with an architecture optimized for the fast operational needs of digital signal processing.-Typical characteristics:...

 and/or ASIC

ASIC

ASIC may refer to:* Application-specific integrated circuit, an integrated circuit developed for a particular use, as opposed to a customised general-purpose device.* ASIC programming language, a dialect of BASIC...

 chips. The company claims advantages such as higher performance and energy efficiency

Efficient energy use

Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the goal of efforts to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a home allows a building to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a comfortable temperature...

, scalability

Scalability

In electronics scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process, to handle growing amount of work in a graceful manner or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth...

, higher productivity due to software programming rather than hardware design, and off-the-shelf

Commercial off-the-shelf

In the United States, Commercially available Off-The-Shelf is a Federal Acquisition Regulation term defining a nondevelopmental item of supply that is both commercial and sold in substantial quantities in the commercial marketplace, and that can be procured or utilized under government contract...

 availability.

Video codec libraries are available for a variety of professional camera and video editing formats such as DVCPRO HD, VC-3(DNxHD), AVC-Intra and others.

Related

Other MPPAs include picoChip

PicoChip

Picochip is a venture-backed fabless semiconductor company based in Bath, England, founded in 2000.The company is active in two areas, with two distinct product families.-Multi-core DSP:...

 and IntellaSys, and the UC Davis's AsAP

Asynchronous Array of Simple Processors

The asynchronous array of simple processors architecture comprises a 2-D array of reduced complexity programmable processors with small memories interconnected by a reconfigurable mesh network...

 research chip. Related multicore

Multicore

Multicore may refer to:* Multi-core processor ** Multicore Association, founded in 2005, a non-profit, industry consortium focused on multicore technology* multicore cable, a generic term for an electrical cable that has multiple cores...

 devices include Aspex

Aspex

Aspex Corporation, originally founded in 1992, is a supplier of electron microscopy tools to researchers, developers and manufacturers working on Process control through automated Scanning Electron Microscope and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy....

, Cavium, ClearSpeed

ClearSpeed

ClearSpeed Technology Ltd is a semiconductor company, formed in 2002 to develop enhanced SIMD processors for use in high-performance computing and embedded systems. Based in Bristol, UK, the company has been selling its processors since 2005...

, SPI

Stream Processors, Inc

Stream Processors, Inc was a Silicon Valley-based fabless semiconductor companyspecializing in the design and manufacture of high-performance digital signal processors for applications including video...

, Tilera

Tilera

Tilera Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company focusing on scalable multicore embedded processor design. The company is currently shipping multiple processors, including the TILE64, TILEPro64, and the TILEPro36, TILE-Gx36, TILE-Gx16 and TILE-Gx9...

 and others. The more established processor companies Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...

 and Freescale are also starting to do multicore

Multicore

Multicore may refer to:* Multi-core processor ** Multicore Association, founded in 2005, a non-profit, industry consortium focused on multicore technology* multicore cable, a generic term for an electrical cable that has multiple cores...

 products, but at present with a lower number of processors (typically 3-8) and have traditional shared-memory, timing-sensitive programming models.

Recognition

Microprocessor Report

Microprocessor Report (magazine)

Microprocessor Report, is a publication for engineers on microprocessors.It was first published in 1987 by Michael Slater, oiginally monthly in print. It later was published weekly online and monthly in print. The annual April 1 issue sometimes contained humorous spoofs such as "The Butt Gate" and...

gave a 2006 MPR Analysts’ Choice Award for Innovation for the Ambric-architecture "for the design concept and architecture of its massively parallel processor, the Am2045".

Further reading

• Tom Halfhill, "Ambric's New Parallel Processor", Microprocessor Report, October 10, 2006.
• Tom Halfhill, "MPR Innovation Award: Ambric", Microprocessor Report, February 20, 2007.