The Proteus Processor — A Conventional CPU with Reconfigurable Functionality

This paper describes the starting position for research beginning at the Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow. The research will investigate a novel microprocessor design incorporating reconfigurable logic in its ALU, allowing the processor’s function units to be customised to suit the currently running application. We argue that this architecture will provide a performance gain for a wide range of applications without additional programmer effort. The paper gives some background information into similar research, argues the benefits of this idea compared to current research, and lists some of the questions that need to be answered to make this idea a reality. We end by specifying the initial work plan for the project.