ACE16K: a 128×128 focal plane analog processor with digital I/O

This paper presents a new generation 128×128 focal-plane analog programmable array processor (FPAPAP), from a system level perspective, which has been manufactured in a 0.35 μm standard digital 1P-5M CMOS technology. The chip has been designed to achieve the high-speed and moderate-accuracy (8b) requirements of most real time early-vision processing applications. It is easily embedded in conventional digital hosting systems: external data interchange and control are completely digital. The chip contains close to four millions transistors, 90% of them working in analog mode, and exhibits a relatively low power consumption-<4 W, i.e. less than 1 μW per transistor. Computing vs. power peak values are in the order of 1 TeraOPS/W, while maintained VGA processing throughputs of 100 frames/s are possible with about 10-20 basic image processing tasks on each frame.