Biologically Enabled Non-Homogeneous Distributed Processing through Evaluation of Resources

To address the Army’s need for chip-scale, reconfigurable distributed processing on a fabric of network connections, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Biologically Enabled Non-homogeneous Distributed processing through Evaluation of Resources (BENDER) system. This system is based on a resource-centric load-balancing protocol; autonomous resource discovery routines; a self-managed, zero-processor overhead communication fabric of network connections; and concurrent programming extensions to process element instruction set architectures. This innovation offers new levels of computational performance in reconfigurable computing while eliminating communication overhead and minimizing power consumption. BENDER is a chip-scale technology that can be directly integrated into next-generation military mobile electronics devices such as the Joint Tactical Radio System, enabling lower power consumption, reduced chip count, and reduced form factor over currently available technologies. BENDER further provides reconfigurability, thereby breaking the single-use restrictions that hobble many current military electronics systems. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of BENDER by developing the load-balancing and resource-discovery routines and integrating these with a simulation of a chip-scale distributed processing network, and test it using off-the-shelf benchmarks. In Phase II, POC plans to refine the BENDER technology and design a multichip module implementation to meet Army rapid prototyping needs.