REPLICA is a special-purpose computer architecture for active multi-sensory perception of 3-D objects. Active multisensory perception of 3-D objects means the ability to manipulate and probe objects as well as to see, hear, and touch them, where the objects involved may be static, changing or in motion. It is becoming an important area in robotics research. In order to support active multi-sensory perception efficiently, the system must be highly parallel, reconfigurable, and partitionable. The ability to achieve these functional requirements depends strongly on the capabilities and flexibilities of the underlying interconnection networks. In this paper, the architecture of REPLICA is presented and a set of interconnection networks is proposed. This set consists of a capability-enhanced cross-bar switch for controller-processor communications and a set of bidirectional rings for processor-processor communications. This set of interconnection networks support the required flexibilities in partitioning and reconfiguration. The cost of these networks can also be kept low.

REPLICA is a special-purpose computer architecture to support active multi-sensory perception of 3-D objects. The system is partitionable, reconfigurable, and highly parallel. In this paper, we present the design of a set of interconnection networks which form the core of the REPLICA architecture. This set of interconnection networks consists of a capability-enhanced cross-bar switch and multiple fast shift-register rings. The capability-enhanced cross-bar switch supports rapid set-up of partitions, point-to-point communication and broadcasting communication between the controller and processors in a partition. The multiple rings support high bandwidth communications among the processors and also provide the partitionability and reconfigurability required by the system. The cost of these interconnection networks can also be kept low. The communication delay in the ring network is analyzed by deriving an upper bound on the maximum communication delay in a partition. A set of performance attributes for evaluating the performance of reconfigurable, partitionable, and highly parallel computer systems is proposed. Based on this set of attributes, the design of the REPLICA architecture is evaluated and compared with the other reconfigurable, partitionable, and highly parallel computer architectures in the literature.