Method and apparatus for encoding design description in reconfigurable multi-processor system

Abstract

A method (400) and apparatus (100) are disclosed for storing the software specifications (320) for each processor (110) in a multi-processor system (100). The disclosed storage technique reduces the total memory space that is required to store the configuration information for each processor (110) and does not require a linear scaling of the memory size when the number of processors increases. Each unique software specification (320) is stored in memory and a pointer (310) is stored for each processor (110) that identifies the corresponding location in memory (140′) of the configuration information for the processor (110). The size of the memory area that stores the pointers (310) for each processor (110) still has a linear relationship with the number of processors (110). The size of the memory area (140′) that stores the unique software specifications (320) is independent of the number of processors (110).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.