Ambric architecture and processors were developed by Ambric, Inc. Its Am2045 Massively Parallel Processor Array (MPPA) chips were primarily used in high-performance embedded systems such as medical imaging, video, and signal-processing. Ambric was founded in 2003, developed and introduced the Am2045 and its software tools in 2007, and fell victim to the crash of 2008. Ambric's Am2045 and tools remained available through Nethra Imaging, Inc., which closed in 2012.
Ambric architecture is a massively parallel distributed memory multiprocessor, based on the Structural Object Programming Model. Each processor is programmed in conventional Java (a strict subset) and/or assembly code. The hundreds of processors on the chip send data and control messages to one another through an interconnect of reconfigurable, self-synchronizing channels, which provide both communication and synchronization. The model of computation is very similar to a Kahn process network with bounded buffers.
The Am2045 device has 336 32-bit RISC-DSP fixed-point processors and 336 2-KB memories, which run at up to 300 MHz. It has an Eclipse-based integrated development environment including editor, compiler, assemblers, simulator, configuration generator, source-code debugger and video/image-processing, signal-processing, and video-codec libraries.