Efficient vector processing on a dataflow supercomputer SIGMA-1

Structure-flow processing is proposed as a novel scheme for handling data structures such as vectors in data-flow architecture. The main objective of structure-flow processing is to enhance the vector processing performance. In this scheme, the arrival of a data structure unrolls the control structure that processes the data structure itself. A high-level structure is an implementation mechanism of a structure-flow scheme on a practical data-flow computer. Since all the computation is executed by instruction-level data-flow architecture, scalar-level parallelism and function-level parallelism are also fully utilized by this scheme. The SIGMA-1 architecture that supports high-level structure processing is discussed. Performance measurements show that vector programs can be executed three to four times faster than by unfolding using scalar dataflow processing.>