Ambric, Inc. was a designer of computer processors that developed the Ambric architecture. Its Am2045

Massively Parallel Processor Array A massively parallel processor array, also known as a multi purpose processor array (MPPA) is a type of integrated circuit which has a massively parallel array of hundreds or thousands of CPUs and RAM memories. These processors pass work to one an ...

(MPPA)

chips ''CHiPs'' is an American crime drama television series created by Rick Rosner and originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1977, to May 1, 1983. After the final first-run telecast on NBC in May 1983, the series went into reruns on Sundays fr ...

were primarily used in high-performance

embedded systems An embedded system is a specialized computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is em ...

such as medical imaging, video, and signal-processing. Ambric was founded in 2003 in

Beaverton, Oregon Beaverton is a city in the Tualatin Valley, located in Washington County in the U.S. state of Oregon, with a small portion bordering Portland. The city is among the main cities that make up the Portland metropolitan area. Its population was ...

by Jay Eisenlohr and Anthony Mark Jones. Eisenlohr previously founded an
sold Rendition, Inc. to Micron Technology
for $93M, while Jones is a leading expert in analog, digital, and system IC design and is the named inventor on over 120 U.S. patents. Jones was also the founder of a number of companies prior to Ambric, and has since co-founde
Vitek IP
with technology and patent expert Dan Buri in 2019. Ambric developed and introduced the Am2045 and its software tools in 2007, but fell victim to the

2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...

. Ambric's Am2045 and tools remained available through Nethra Imaging, Inc., which closed in 2012.

Architecture and programming model

Ambric

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

is a massively parallel

distributed memory In computer science, distributed memory refers to a Multiprocessing, multiprocessor computer system in which each Central processing unit, processor has its own private Computer memory, memory. Computational tasks can only operate on local data ...

multiprocessor Multiprocessing (MP) is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. The ...

, based on the Structural Object

Programming Model A programming model is an execution model coupled to an API or a particular pattern of code. In this style, there are actually two execution models in play: the execution model of the base programming language and the execution model of the p ...

. Each processor is programmed in conventional

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

(a strict subset) and/or

assembly code In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

. The hundreds of processors on the chip send data and control messages to one another through an interconnect of reconfigurable, self-synchronizing

channels Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to: Geography * Channel (geography), a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water. Australia * Channel Country, region of outback Australia in Queensland and pa ...

, which provide both communication and

synchronization Synchronization is the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. For example, the Conductor (music), conductor of an orchestra keeps the orchestra synchronized or ''in time''. Systems that operate with all parts in synchrony are sa ...

. The

model of computation In computer science, and more specifically in computability theory and computational complexity theory, a model of computation is a model which describes how an output of a mathematical function is computed given an input. A model describes how ...

is very similar to a

Kahn process network A Kahn process network (KPN, or process network) is a distributed ''model of computation'' in which a group of deterministic sequential processes communicate through unbounded first in, first out channels. The model requires that reading from a c ...

with bounded buffers.

Devices and tools

The Am2045 device has 336 32-

bit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as ...

RISC In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a comp ...

- DSP fixed-point processors and 336 2-

kibibyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

memories, which run at up to 300 MHz. It has an Eclipse-based

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

including editor, compiler, assemblers, simulator, configuration generator, source-code

debugger A debugger is a computer program used to test and debug other programs (the "target" programs). Common features of debuggers include the ability to run or halt the target program using breakpoints, step through code line by line, and display ...

and video/image-processing, signal-processing, and video-codec libraries.

Power and performance

The Am2045 delivers 1 TeraOPS (Operations Per Second) and 50 Giga-MACs ( Multply-Accumulates per second) of fixed-point processing with 6-12W of power consumed (dependent on the application).

Applications

Ambric's MPPA devices were used for high-definition, 2K and 4K

video compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...

transcoding Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target ...

and analysis,

image recognition Computer vision tasks include methods for acquiring, processing, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g. in the form o ...

medical imaging Medical imaging is the technique and process of imaging the interior of a body for clinical analysis and medical intervention, as well as visual representation of the function of some organs or tissues (physiology). Medical imaging seeks to revea ...

, signal-processing,

software defined radio Software-defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where components that conventionally have been implemented in analog hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by ...

and other compute-intensive

streaming media Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a Computer network, network for playback using a Media player (disambiguation), media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of Network packet, packets from a Server (computing), ...

applications, which otherwise would use

FPGA A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a type of configurable integrated circuit that can be repeatedly programmed after manufacturing. FPGAs are a subset of logic devices referred to as programmable logic devices (PLDs). They consist of a ...

, DSP and/or

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficien ...

chips. The company claimed advantages such as higher performance and

energy efficiency Energy efficiency may refer to: * Energy efficiency (physics), the ratio between the useful output and input of an energy conversion process ** Electrical efficiency, useful power output per electrical power consumed ** Mechanical efficiency, a rat ...

scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work. One definition for software systems specifies that this may be done by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that ...

, higher productivity due to

software programming Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of procedures, by writin ...

rather than hardware design, and off-the-shelf availability. Video codec libraries were available for a variety of professional camera and video editing formats such as

DVCPRO HD DV (from ''Digital Video'') is a family of codecs and tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. It includes the recording or cassette formats DV, Mini ...

, VC-3 (DNxHD),

AVC-Intra AVC-Intra is a type of video coding developed by Panasonic, and then supported in products made by other companies. AVC-Intra is available in Panasonic's high definition broadcast products, such as, for example, their P2 card equipped broadcast c ...

and others. An X-Ray customer system employs over 13,000 cores contained in 40 Am2045 chips, doing 3D reconstruction, in under 500W, in a single ATCA chassis.

Other MPPAs include picoChip and IntellaSys, and the

UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

AsAP ASAP usually stands for " as soon as possible". ASAP may also refer to: Arts and media Music Performers * ASAP (band), a hard rock band fronted by Adrian Smith * ASAP Mob, a recording group from Harlem, New York ** ASAP Ferg (born 1988), Americ ...

research chip. Companies that offer or offered products classified as manycore (a related classification) devices include Aspex Semiconductor,

Cavium Cavium, Inc. was a fabless semiconductor company based in San Jose, California, specializing in ARM-based and MIPS-based network, video and security processors and SoCs. The company was co-founded in 2000 by Syed B. Ali and M. Raghib Hussain, ...

, ClearSpeed, Coherent Logix, SPI, and

Tilera Tilera Corporation was a fabless semiconductor company focusing on manycore embedded processor design. The company shipped multiple processors in the TILE64, TILE''Pro''64, and TILE-Gx lines. After a series of company acquisitions, Tilera's in ...

. The more established processor companies,

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

and

Freescale Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer. It was created by the divestiture of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola in 2004. Freescale focused their integrated circuit products on the automotive, embedde ...

, offer

multicore A multi-core processor (MCP) is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit (IC) with two or more separate central processing units (CPUs), called ''cores'' to emphasize their multiplicity (for example, ''dual-core'' or ''quad-core''). Ea ...

products, but with a lower number of processors (typically 3–8) and use traditional shared-memory, timing-sensitive programming models.

Recognition

Microprocessor Report ''Microprocessor Report'' is a newsletter covering the microprocessor industry. The publication is accessible only to paying subscribers. To avoid bias, it does not take advertisements. The publication provides extensive analysis of new high-perf ...

gave a 2006 MPR Analysts' Choice Award for Innovation for the Ambric-architecture "for the design concept and architecture of its massively parallel processor, the Am2045". In 2013, Ambric architecture received the Top 20 award from the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines, recognizing it as one of the 20 most significant publications in the 20-year history of the conference.FCCM20 Endorsement of "A Structural Object Programming Model, Architecture, Chip and Tools for Reconfigurable Computing", April 201

/ref>

References

{{Reflist

External links

Ambric website, May 12, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
Electronics companies established in 2003 Electronics companies disestablished in 2008 Massively parallel computers Digital signal processors Reconfigurable computing Fabless semiconductor companies Companies based in Beaverton, Oregon 2003 establishments in Oregon 2008 disestablishments in Oregon Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States American companies established in 2003 American companies disestablished in 2008 Defunct manufacturing companies based in Oregon