Clustering Multiple Propeller Cip

silverpegasus

Dear all readers...

I'm a newbie in propeller world and I got final project about clustering propeller. I want to connect few propeller chip (about 2 -4 ) and processing a specific algorithm. Does anyone hv ever try this? How to connect such multiple chip ? By serial connection ?? Please..share your experience.. Thank you........

heater

You might want to check out Cluso's 6 Propeller board project here http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=780033

Perhaps you don't need/want the board itself but there are some pointers to high speed Prop to Prop communication in there.

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Michael O'Brien

Hi,
If you are thinking SIMD or hybrid SIMD/MIMD processing you may want to refer to the post by Christian, Ken and Pems.
It describes a design pattern where a set of propeller chips are loaded off of a single EEPROM, you can either run then run each chip with 8 different programs on each of the cogs or load the same program on each of the 8 cogs to get a single large vector processor. With 8 propeller chips you would have 64 processing units.

Parallax Forum: Multiple Propellers & one EEPROM
http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=25&m=301878&p=1

Also, Chip Gracey has submitted a Propeller loader that will load the ram of other propellers.
http://obex.parallax.com/objects/61/

For connections between them you could....
1) set them up in a one dimensional array with cog 0 and 7 connecting to other chips.
2) create a two dimensional grid where cog 0 and 7 would need 3 external connections with cog 1 to 6 requiring 2
3) A networked tree - where 7 of the cogs form a 3 level tree and one of the cogs acts as a router between chips - CM1 like
4) A networked cluster - where you would require a dedicated routing propeller that would cluster up to 8 other propellers with 8 pu's - CM1 like
5) Hypercube connection up to around 4 propellers as the connections would increase in O(n) fashion
More chips can be connected if we expand the outputs using 74HC595's for input and 74HC165's for output.
6) A fully connected network would quickly in O(N^N) complexity require more than 32 connections
...

thank you
/michael

silverpegasus

Thank you for all your referral posting. I'll try it first, later I will share my project.