Worlds First Polymorphic Processor Unveiled

By Greg McNevin

March 22, 2007: Raytheon has announced what it claims is the world’s first Polymorphic computer, capable of adopting different architectural forms depending on application.

Dubbed MONARCH for Morphable Networked Micro-Architecture, the company says that the technology addresses large data volumes from sensor systems alongside signal and data processing throughput and is the most adaptable processor every build for the Department of Defense.

Raytheon claims that the MONARCH reduces the number of processor types required and performs as a single system on a chip, enabling significant reductions in the number of processors and array performance of a teraflop throughput.

“Typically, a chip is optimally designed either for front-end signal processing or back-end control and data processing," explains Nick Uros, vice president for the Advanced Concepts and Technology group of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. "The MONARCH micro-architecture is unique in its ability to reconfigure itself to optimise processing on the fly.

“MONARCH provides exceptional compute capacity and highly flexible data bandwidth capability with beyond state-of-the-art power efficiency, and it's fully programmable."

Raytheon believes that the MONARCH computer is the most power-efficient processor available, outperforming Intel’s quad-core Xeon by a factor of 10 according to Michael Vahey, the principal investigator for the company's MONARCH technology.

This is no desktop processor, however, as the MONARCH contains six microprocessors and a highly interconnected reconfigurable computing array, providing 64 gigaflops (floating point operations per second) with more than 60 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth and more than 43 gigabytes per second of off-chip data bandwidth.

Deep Blue eat your heart out.

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