Model Matching and SFMD Computation

In systems that process sensory data there is frequently a model matching stage where class hypotheses are combined to recognize a complex entity. We introduce a new model of parallelism, the Single Function Multiple Data (SFMD) model, appropriate to this stage. SFMD functionality can be added with small hardware expense to certain existing SIMD architectures, and as an incremental addition to the programming model. Adding SFMD to an SIMD machine will not only allow faster model matching, but also increase its flexibility as a general purpose machine and its scope in performing the initial stages of sensory processing. 1 INTRODUCTION In systems that process sensory data there is frequently a post-classification stage where several independent class hypotheses are combined into the recognition of a more complex entity. Examples include matching word models with a string of observation probabilities, and matching visual object models with collections of edges or other features. Current parallel computer architectures for processing sensory data focus on the classification and pre-classification stages (Hammerstrom 1990).This is reasonable, as those stages likely have the largest potential for speedup through parallel execution. Nonetheless, the model-matching stage is also suitable for parallelism, as each model may be matched independently of the others. We introduce a new style of parallelism, Single Function Multiple Data (SFMD), that is suitable for the model-matching stage.