Functional Extensibility: Making the World Safe for VLSI

Abstract

The greatly improved access to VLSI technology , now available to non-specialists , has sparked considerable interest in the design of special function architectures (SFAs) that exploit its unique characteristics and advantages. For example, many of SFA’s take the form of pipelines or arrays in order to capitalize on the economies of replication that come with VLSI. Application of these VLSI SFA’s has reflected current research interests in areas such as pattern recognition , image analysis , data base retrieval, interactive graphics, and speech processing.