Scalable space/time-shared stream-processing on the run-time reconfigurable PCA architecture

This paper describes space-time resource tradeoff experiments carried out on the dynamically reconfigurable “Plastic Cell Architecture (PCA)” with cryptographic and evolutionary computation kernels. Data-path-oriented processing functionality is encapsulated in asynchronous hardware objects with variable graining and implemented using look-up tables. Communication (i.e. connectivity and control) between the distributed processing objects is achieved by means of inter-object message passing. The key point of the truly scalable, asynchronous PCA architecture is that it offers flexible low power pipeline processing combined with the ability to evolve new circuit functionality through on-line adaptation due to a uniform data and circuit representation and rich communication facilities.