A description of an architecture capable of computing two-dimensional fast Fourier transforms on a 256*256 pixel image at a rate of 30 images per second is presented. The architecture consists of a small number of basic building blocks which may be repeated to yield any desired performance. To achieve video rate performance, 16 butterfly processors, arranged as four coupled clusters of four processors each, and nine working memories are required. Because of the parallelism and pipelining used in the design, the system clock needed to achieve this high level of performance is only 240 ns.>

This paper describes a parallel high speed multiprocessor architecture suitable for realizing a 512×512 point 2-D FFT in under 1/30 of a second; enabling real time video display processing. The hardware employs a constant geometry algorithm for the implementation and utilizes 16 butterfly processors. The machine can be described as a Multiple Instruction Multiple Data (MIMD) type of machine since 16 processors will be working on 16 sets of data simultaneously. The memory organization is modular in design and provides conflict-free access to all 16 processors at all times. The memory can be interfaced to a host computer which can do other nonreal time picture processing operations on the transformed image.