World's First Polymorphic Computer

tdelama writes to mention Raytheon Company has developed the first polymorphic computer named the Morphable Networked Micro-Architecture (MONARCH) for the US Department of Defense. "'Typically, a chip is optimally designed either for front-end signal processing or back-end control and data processing,' explained Nick Uros, vice president for the Advanced Concepts and Technology group of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. 'The MONARCH micro-architecture is unique in its ability to reconfigure itself to optimize processing on the fly. MONARCH provides exceptional compute capacity and highly flexible data bandwidth capability with beyond state-of-the-art power efficiency, and it's fully programmable.'"

Comments

Beyond state of the art?

[ivan256]

Does that mean it's vaporware? If it exists, how can it be beyond state of the art?

Re:Beyond state of the art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their state-of-the-art-meter goes to eleven.

Sounds Familiar

[PetoskeyGuy]

Low Power, Able to adapt / optimize itself as needed. Sounds like the old Transmeta designs. It would compile and execute code in the processor to emulate x86 commands as needed instead of hard wiring them.

Of course it also sounds like terminator chip but I think that was from another company and should have already happened by now. ;)

Re:But...

[spun]

Is it fully buzzword compliant?

They should no better

[hey!]

There is very, very little new under the sun.

Back in the early 1970s there was a mini computer called the "Meta 4" whose microprogramming could be changed on the fly. The purpose was to let you run software written for other vendors' instruction sets.

While the chip being discussed may do other spiffy stuff to optimize its performance in different roles, you really can't call it the first "polymorphic" computer.

Vs. FPGA?

[yeggman]

How does this compare to a Field Programmable Gate Array?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA

Is this a bunch of those plus some BIOS like program to optimize it?

Re:Vs. FPGA?

[Jake73]

An FPGA could provide the same functionality, but at a tremendous loss of efficiency. FPGAs have a very high overhead to support reconfiguration. But the reconfiguration is considerably more than this processor (likely) offers. (I couldn't read the article - dead link)

But with a claim of incredible power efficiency, it's decidedly not an FPGA. I imagine they borrow some of the concepts, but not entirely.

As a hybrid, FPOA (field-programmable object arrays) provide small programmable "objects" which are less granular than typical FPGA offerings. In the right application, an FPOA can achieve higher speeds and better power efficiency. In the "wrong" application, they're horrible.

It seems that this device would switch between the high computational efficiency of DSPs and things like graphics processors and the better branching / decision-making performance of general-purpose CPUs.

Sounds more like FPGAs

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Reconfigurable computing using a bunch of FPGAs.

All FPGA vendors now offer CPU cores (or you can get others from opencores.org). These cores can do a slew of different functions from DSP to straight CPU functions... and yes they do run Linux!

For example, Xilinx FPGAs can be reconfigured to run at least 5 different CPU cores, including Java processors etc in single or multi-core arrangements. They can also be reconfigured to do hardware DSP (eg. GPS receivers, sonar processing...). They can implement any peripheral function you care to think of. This makes them pretty versatile for military applications: instead of having to carry a whole raft of different hardware, you can carry one set of boards which can be reconfigured as required.

Re:Information free

[Durinia]

He didn't have much to work with - the press release (err..."article") was information free, too!

Polymorphic?

[aardvarkjoe]

"The MONARCH zaps itself with a wand of polymorph. The arch-lich hits! Oh no, it's using the touch of death! You die..."

Re:But...

[dgatwood]

To topple it, they'll need to create the Amorphable Networked Micro-Architecture (ANARCH).

:-)

First a real Skynet and now this...

[Hubec]

Get a 100k of these running in parallel, give em a self organizing and threading algorithm and run for cover. On the plus side Schwarzenegger's armageddon would be much more interesting than Gore's alternative.

Re:Information free

[dch24]

Well they can't write something like "We built yet another piece of programmable hardware" can they?

No, but they should. Not that I dislike Raytheon inherently, but they are certainly spinning this press release pretty hard. It's just programmable hardware. It's an attempt to catch the attention of the government because there are two Military-Industrial coalitions bidding right now for the military's next generation satellite system (which will be a contract worth tens of billions of dollars for about the next decade).

Since the press release is so light on detail, obviously the actual hardware isn't that impressive. Note things like these quotes:

In laboratory testing MONARCH outperformed the Intel quad-core Xeon chip by a factor of 10

Oh, really? And how many libraries of congress per fortnight is that?

for such purposes as global positioning systems, airborne and space radar and video processing systems

Target audience, right there.

64 gigaflops (floating point operations per second) with more than 60 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth and more than 43 gigabytes per second of off-chip data bandwidth.

This is at least a little bit of information. However, those numbers are similar to current generation CPUs. I think the PS3 Cell can outperform this chip, so unless we have some power numbers it's unimpressive.

It's not a big surprise. It's just a press release and a slashvertisement.

It gets better...

[bconway]

Don't forget, it's from the company that brought us the Patriot Missile (TM), so you know it's gonna be good.