Importance

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Abstract

A single chip microprocessor or memory device has reprogrammable characteristics according to the invention. In the case of the microprocessor, a fixed processing cell is provided as is common to perform logic calculations. A portion of the chip silicon real-estate, however, is dedicated a programmable gate array. This feature enables application-specific configurations to allow adaptation to the particular time-changing demands of the microprocessor and provide the functionality required to best serve those demands. This yields application acceleration and in system-specific functions. In other cases the configurable logic acts as network interface, which allows the same basic processor design to function in any environment to which the interface can adapt. The invention also concerns a memory device having a plurality of memory banks and configurable logic units associated with the memory banks. An interconnect is provided to enable communication between the configurable logic units. These features lessen the impact of the data bottle-neck associated with bus communications, since the processing capability is moved to the memory in the form programmable logic, which can be configured to the needs of the specific application. The inherently large on-chip bandwidth can then be utilized to increase the speed at which bulk data is processed.

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First Claim