This paper presents a data-flow computer, constituted of a large array
of data-flow processors and programmed using a functional language, and its
application to real-time image processing.
The approach integrates tightly and efficiently the data-flow architecture
principle and the functional programming concept. It leads to a very simple
and regular hardware. It also provides a very efficient and user-friendly
software interface for application development. It remains applicable in
systems that includes processors of different granularity.
An experimental system, including 1024 low-level custom data-flow processors
(6 x 25 MBytes/s, 50 million operations per second) and 3 `T800' transputers,
was built and several image processing algorithms were run in real time at
digital video speed.