Analog Devices,inc.

Analog Devices Global

Kaushal Sanghai

Michael G Perkins

John L Redford

Boris Lerner

Andrew James Higham

Nicolas Le Dortz

Michael S Allen

Atulya Yellepeddi

Johannes Traa

Brian C Donnelly

Thomas C Ajamian

John Robert McCarty

Robert E Peloquin

Far field devices typically rely on audio only for enabling user interaction and involve only audio processing. Adding a vision-based modality can greatly improve the user interface of far field devices to make them more natural to the user. For instance, users can look at the device to interact with it rather than having to repeatedly utter a wakeword. Vision can also be used to assist audio processing, such as to improve the beamformer. For instance, vision can be used for direction of arrival estimation. Combining vision and audio can greatly enhance the user interface and performance of far field devices.

Multi-modal far field user interfaces and vision-assisted audio processing

In one particular example, this disclosure provides an efficient mechanism to determine the degree of parallelization possible for a loop in the presence of possible memory aliases that cannot be resolved at compile-time. Hardware instructions are provided that test memory addresses at run-time and set a mode or register that enables a single instance of a loop to run the maximum number of SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) lanes to run in parallel that obey the semantics of the original scalar loop. Other hardware features that extend applicability or performance of such instructions are enumerated.

Paralleizing loops in the presence of possible memory aliases

In an example, there is disclosed a computing apparatus, having: a first master having a first ordinal quality of service (QoS) profile; a second master having a second ordinal QoS profile, wherein the second ordinal QoS profile is higher in order than the first ordinal QoS profile; a slave; a multiplexed interconnect to communicatively couple the first master and second master to the slave with a priority according to the ordinal QoS profiles; and one or more logic elements, including at least one hardware logic element, providing a QoS engine to: determine that the first master has initiated a slave operation via the interconnect; determine that completing the slave operation according to a QoS criterion provided by the second master requires elevated QoS; and promote the first master to a third ordinal QoS profile having an order higher than the second ordinal QoS profile.

Quality of service ordinal modification

The present disclosure provides a processor, and associated method, for performing parallel processing within a register. An exemplary processor may include a processing element having a compute unit and a register file. The register file includes a register that is divisible into lanes for parallel processing. The processor may further include a mask register and a predicate register. The mask register and the predicate register respective include a number of mask bits and predicate bits equal to a maximum number of divisible lanes of the register. A state of the mask bits and predicate bits is set to respectively achieve enabling/disabling of the lanes from executing an instruction and conditional performance of an operation defined by the instruction. Further, the processor is operable to perform a reduction operation across the lanes of the processing element and/or generate an address for each of the lanes of the processing element.

Processor architecture and method for simplifying programming single instruction, multiple data within a register

According to an example embodiment, a processor such as a digital signal processor (DSP), is provided with a register acting as a predicate counter. The predicate counter may include more than two useful values, and in addition to acting as a condition for executing an instruction, may also keep track of nesting levels within a loop or conditional branch. In some cases, the predicate counter may be configured to operate in single-instruction, multiple data (SIMD) mode, or SIMD-within-a-register (SWAR) mode.

Predicate counter

The present disclosure provides a memory interconnection architecture for a processor, such as a vector processor, that performs parallel operations. An example processor may include a compute array that includes processing elements; a memory that includes memory banks; and a memory interconnect network architecture that interconnects the compute array to the memory. In an example, the memory interconnect network architecture includes a switch-based interconnect network and a non-switch based interconnect network. The processor is configured to synchronously load a first data operand to each of the processing elements via the switch-based interconnect network and a second data operand to each of the processing elements via the non-switch-based interconnect network.

Growing community of inventors

Somerville, MA, United States of America

Kaushal Sanghai