An approach for reducing the programming cost of soft switches in reconfigurable WSI arrays

Discusses the cost involved in the programming of nonpermanent (soft) switching elements in an augmented interconnection network for reconfigurable two-dimensional wafer scale integration (WSI) arrays. The formulation and characterization of two different figures for evaluating the cost of switch programming are given. A new cost, referred to as the adjusted cost, is introduced for establishing a relationship between the programming process and the switching modes of the target array. Reduction in cost is achieved by two techniques: redundancy reduction given by the number of times a switch is programmed in a tree; and a relaxation technique, referred to as compression, in which each of the two cost figures is primarily considered for reduction.