Title :
An investigation of the performance of various instruction-issue buffer topologies
Author :
Jourdan, Stéphan ; Sainrat, Pascal ; Litaize, Daniel
Author_Institution :
Inst. de Recherche en Inf., Univ. Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France
fDate :
29 Nov-1 Dec 1995
Abstract :
In out-of-order issue superscalar microprocessors, instructions must be buffered before they are issued. This buffer can be either unified (one buffer linked to all functional units) as in the P6, distributed among the units as in the PowerPC 620, or semi-unified (a few buffers each shared by several units) as in the MIPS R10000. Of course, the size of this buffer also plays a leading role in the performance of the processor. Intensive trace-driven simulations on the SPEC92 suite have been made in order to determine the best designs and relevant choices are pointed out according to the dispatch width of the processor
Keywords :
buffer storage; computer architecture; performance evaluation; MIPS R10000; PowerPC 620; SPEC92; dispatch width; instruction-issue buffer; out-of-order issue; performance; superscalar microprocessors; trace-driven simulations; Books; Decoding; Manufacturing; Microprocessors; Out of order; Topology; Upper bound;
Conference_Titel :
Microarchitecture, 1995., Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Ann Arbor, MI
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-7349-4
DOI :
10.1109/MICRO.1995.476837
