A common operational software (ACOS) approach to a signal processing development system

A Signal processing problem with moderate complexity must be segmented into "smaller" algorithms, intimately linked, to be executed by processing resources. Problems arising from such partitioning and interconnection of these constituent parts are not well understood. It is further complicated by the parallel execution of the elementary operations (primitives) which require the formation of queues and synchronization of the queue with respect to each operation. A software development system has been completed to program and to design the signal processor systems for underwater acoustics applications. This is the first operational signal processing software development system of its kind which enables the system designer to program in signal processing graph notations. The implied hierarchical architecture will lead to the interface to VLSI cell libraries for direct mask generation. A complete computer aided design approach to closely-coupled signal processing systems is described.