A methodology for the development of special-purpose function architectures

The research described in this paper concerns a generalized methodology for the development of special-purpose function architectures (SPFA). The development methodology can be used to introduce the concept of an SPFA approach to an organization. The methodology provides an organized set of processes that can be followed to tailor the development of SPFAs to specific applications. This methodology consists of processes for identification, creation, testing, evaluation, and substitution of SPFAs. It permits a user to carefully select sets of database management functions as candidates to be moved from software into hardware, develop one or more SPFAs that perform this function, and evaluate the consequences of having the function performed as a new hardware architecture. A set of tools/components with which to carry out this methodology are included in the environment of a proposed database machine architecture development facility.

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