TriMedia CPU64 architecture

Author

van Eijndhoven, J.T.J. ; Sijstermans, F.W. ; Vissers, K.A. ; Pol, E.J.D. ; Tromp, M. J A ; Struik, P. ; Bloks, R.H.J. ; van der Wolf, P. ; Pimentel, A.D. ; Vranken, H.P.E.

Author_Institution

Philips Res. Lab., Eindhoven, Netherlands

fYear

1999

fDate

1999

Firstpage

586

Lastpage

592

Abstract

We present a new VLIW core as a successor to the TriMedia TM1000. The processor is targeted for embedded use in media-processing devices like DTVs and set-top boxes. Intended as a core, its design must be supplemented with on-chip co-processors to obtain a cost-effective system. Good performance is obtained through a uniform 64-bit 5 issue-slot VLIW design, supporting subword parallelism with an extensive instruction set optimized with respect to media-processing. Multi-slot `super-ops´ allow powerful multi-argument and multi-result operations. As an example, the IDCT algorithm shows a very low instruction count in comparison with other processors. To achieve good performance, critical sections in the application program source code need to be rewritten with vector data types and function calls for media operations. Benchmarking with several media applications was used to tune the instruction set and study cache behaviour. This resulted in a VLIW architecture with wide data paths and relatively simple CPU control

Keywords

cache storage; instruction sets; microprocessor chips; multimedia systems; parallel architectures; performance evaluation; DTV; TriMedia CPU64 architecture; TriMedia TM1000; VLIW; VLIW core; cache; cost-effective system; function calls; instruction set; media-processing devices; on-chip co-processors; processor; set-top boxes; subword parallelism; vector data types; Computer architecture; Coprocessors; Design optimization; Frequency estimation; HDTV; Pipelines; Registers; Streaming media; Throughput; VLIW;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Computer Design, 1999. (ICCD '99) International Conference on

Conference_Location

Austin, TX

ISSN

1063-6404

Print_ISBN

0-7695-0406-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICCD.1999.808601

Filename

808601