Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/L96981/01
Title:	SPECIAL PURPOSE PROCESSORS FOR CONTROL SYSTEMS - CONTINUATION STUDY
Principal Investigator:	Goodall, Professor RM
Other Investigators:	Jones, Professor S
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:	Gatefield Corporation
Department:	Electronic, Electrical & Systems Enginee
Organisation:	Loughborough University
Scheme:	Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts:	01 January 1998	Ends:	30 June 2000	Value (£):	119,560
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	System on Chip
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Manufacturing
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
We wish to complete and extend a project undertaken under GR/J13892. This investigated the premise that the application of control is sufficiently widespread to justify a new Control System Processor having an architecture targeted for control.We were excited by the outcome of the funded 2 years. Our methodology, which involved searching for suitable data representations and targeting hardware architectures to support these representations, had resulted in a compact processor core which appeared to have greater than 10x better performance than DSPs. Moreover, the availability of large FPGAS implies it is possible to develop processor cores which provide powerful application-specific speed-ups without incurring high NRE charges of custom silicon. Completing the work which EPSRC has enabled us to begin, and extending it to accomodate recent developments in semiconductors, is our goal. The combined intentions of discovering structures which minimise numerical requirements and then targeting the processor architecture to suit, is a wholly original approach. The indications from the research so far is that it will result in at least a 10x improvement in performance.The Gatefield Division of Zycad will support the proposed work through the provision of state-of-the-art hardware and software as well as technical support for the project.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Further Information:
Organisation Website:	http://www.lboro.ac.uk