Image Understanding Architecture Prototype Evaluation and Development

Abstract : The primary goal of this research was to complete the development and proof-of-concept prototype of a 1/64th slice of a parallel architecture to support image understanding, and to test and evaluate the architecture so the next generation Image Understanding Architecture (IUA) can be specified. The majority of the hardware effort has taken place at Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California, although U Mass has principle responsibility for designing the IUA architecture and has undertaken some smaller portions of hardware development. The majority of the software effort took place at U Mass. Software efforts included development of a detailed software simulator for the IUA, a FORTH interpreter, and Apply and C compilers for the low-level processor of the IUA. Also developed were run-time support libraries, diagnostics, and vision algorithms. Some effort was spent implementing the ARPA IU Benchmark and evaluating the results of the exercise. Included in this report is a summary of accomplishments, an overview of the IUA design and the trade-offs addressed in its development, the design of the intermediate level interconnection network, the design of the IUA simulator and the ARPA benchmark.