The UTMC eCard (diagrammed above) is a PCI card with a pair of content addressable memory (CAM) chips driven by a MIPS processor on the card. We are working with Aeroflex, UTMC's parent company, on the development of the eCard for cluster parallel supercomputing. Toward this, KLAT2 soon will be upgraded to include an eCard in each of its 66 nodes.
Aside from accelerating database-like operations, we are working on an interface that will use a bit of compiler technology to implement semi-automatic vectorized applicative caching of arbitrary "pure" C functions in a Linux/GCC environment. These compiler-generated interfaces will take advantage of both CAM engines as well as the MIPS processor. Thus, the eCard should be able to significantly speed-up some arithmetically intensive computations.
A technical overview of the eCard is available as a PDF file.
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