Method and apparatus for removing power-of-two restrictions on

Abstract

An efficient integer-division-by-an-constant method and apparatus. This integer-division-by-an-constant is useful in calculations which must be performed often and/or quickly, and where the denominator is fixed for the calculations, such as address calculations in massively parallel, distributed memory processor systems. Also described is a method and apparatus using the integer-division-by-an-constant method and apparatus, which facilitates removing power-of two restrictions on the reorganization and redistribution of data between remote and local memory blocks in a massively parallel, distributed-memory processing system. The flexible addressing scheme provided supports data organizations which vary widely depending on the processing task. In particular, a plurality of processing elements (PEs) operating in parallel within a subset of all the PEs in a massively parallel processor system, may simultaneously operate on an array data structure, the array data structure having an arbitrary size and shape. Different data organizations in memory are supported by a processing element (PE) internal array address having certain index ranges designated as the target PE number and the areas within those index ranges designating the offset within that PE's local memory. The index ranges and areas are distributed throughout the PE internal array address to achieve various data distributions throughout memory.