Hierarchical Cellular Logic and the Pipe Processor: Structural and Functional Correspondence

Published

July 31, 1985

Author(s)

Ernest Kent, S Tanimoto

Abstract

HCL is a hierarchical cellular logic, in which operations are applied to objects called bit-pyramids which themselves are functions on spaces called hierarchical domains. HCL provides an algebra for computations involving hierarchical, multiple-resolution representations of image data. PIPE is a newly-developed parallel architecture which supports multiple-resolution pyramid operations. This paper establishes that HCL is functionally equivalent to a subset of PIPE's instruction set, and that every HCL primitive operation corresponds to a single machine instruction in PIPE and executes in a single machine cycle. Further, the connectivity of HCL data-objects is embedded in the data-paths of the PIPE architecture. Thus, PIPE can operate upon the data-objects of HCL directly, without using extra storage for links or pointers, and without computation of storage addresses. As a result, PIPE programs implementing HCL may be expected to run enormously faster than corresponding programs for von Neumann machines, or for other parallel machines which do not share PIPE's architectural correspondence to the structures of HCL.

Proceedings Title

IEEE Computer Society Workshop on Computer Architecture for Pattern Analysis and Image Database Management - Capaidm

Conference Dates

July 1, 1985

Conference Location

Capaidm, FL, USA

Conference Title

Pattern Analysis and Image Database Management

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Pipe

Citation

Kent, E. and Tanimoto, S. (1985), Hierarchical Cellular Logic and the Pipe Processor: Structural and Functional Correspondence, IEEE Computer Society Workshop on Computer Architecture for Pattern Analysis and Image Database Management - Capaidm, Capaidm, FL, USA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=820204 (Accessed April 30, 2026)

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