Customizable processors have been described as the next natural step in the evolution of the microprocessor business: a step in the life of a new technology where top performance alone is no longer sufficient to guarantee market success. Other factors become fundamental, such as time to market, convenience, energy efficiency, and ease of customization. This book is the first to explore comprehensively one of the most fundamental trends which emerged in the last decade: to treat processors not as rigid, fixed entities, which designers include "as is" in their products; but rather, to build...
Customizable processors have been described as the next natural step in the evolution of the microprocessor business: a step in the life of a new tech...
It is well known that embedded systems have to be implemented efficiently. This requires that processors optimized for certain application domains are used in embedded systems. Such an optimization requires a careful exploration of the design space, including a detailed study of cost/performance tradeoffs. In order to avoid time-consuming assembly language programming during design space exploration, compilers are needed. In order to analyze the effect of various software or hardware configurations on the performance, retargetable compilers are needed that can generate code for numerous...
It is well known that embedded systems have to be implemented efficiently. This requires that processors optimized for certain application domains are...
The building blocks of today's and future embedded systems are complex intellectual property components, or cores, many of which are programmable processors. Traditionally, these embedded processors mostly have been pro grammed in assembly languages due to efficiency reasons. This implies time consuming programming, extensive debugging, and low code portability. The requirements of short time-to-market and dependability of embedded systems are obviously much better met by using high-level language (e.g. C) compil ers instead of assembly. However, the use of C compilers frequently incurs a...
The building blocks of today's and future embedded systems are complex intellectual property components, or cores, many of which are programmable proc...
New software tools and a sophisticated methodology above RTL are required to answer the challenges of designing an optimized application specific processor (ASIP). This book offers an automated and fully integrated implementation flow and compares it to common implementation practice. It provides case-studies that emphasize that neither the architectural advantages nor the design space of ASIPs are sacrificed for an automated implementation.
New software tools and a sophisticated methodology above RTL are required to answer the challenges of designing an optimized application specific p...
Computerarchitecturepresentlyfacesanunprecedentedrevolution: Thestep from monolithic processors towards multi-core ICs, motivated by the ever - creasingneedforpowerandenergyef ciencyinnanoelectronics. Whetheryou prefer to call it MPSoC (multi-processor system-on-chip) or CMP (chip mul- processor), no doubt this revolution affects large domains of both computer science and electronics, and it poses many new interdisciplinary challenges. For instance, ef cient programming models and tools for MPSoC are largely an open issue: "Multi-core platforms are a reality - but where is the software...
Computerarchitecturepresentlyfacesanunprecedentedrevolution: Thestep from monolithic processors towards multi-core ICs, motivated by the ever - creasi...
Simulation of computer architectures has made rapid progress recently. The primary application areas are hardware/software performance estimation and optimization as well as functional and timing verification. Recent, innovative technologies such as retargetable simulator generation, dynamic binary translation, or sampling simulation have enabled widespread use of processor and system-on-chip (SoC) simulation tools in the semiconductor and embedded system industries. Simultaneously, processor and SoC simulation is still a very active research area, e.g. what amounts to higher simulation...
Simulation of computer architectures has made rapid progress recently. The primary application areas are hardware/software performance estimation and ...
It is well known that embedded systems have to be implemented efficiently. This requires that processors optimized for certain application domains are used in embedded systems. Such an optimization requires a careful exploration of the design space, including a detailed study of cost/performance tradeoffs. In order to avoid time-consuming assembly language programming during design space exploration, compilers are needed. In order to analyze the effect of various software or hardware configurations on the performance, retargetable compilers are needed that can generate code for numerous...
It is well known that embedded systems have to be implemented efficiently. This requires that processors optimized for certain application domains are...
The building blocks of today's and future embedded systems are complex intellectual property components, or cores, many of which are programmable processors. Traditionally, these embedded processors mostly have been pro grammed in assembly languages due to efficiency reasons. This implies time consuming programming, extensive debugging, and low code portability. The requirements of short time-to-market and dependability of embedded systems are obviously much better met by using high-level language (e.g. C) compil ers instead of assembly. However, the use of C compilers frequently incurs a...
The building blocks of today's and future embedded systems are complex intellectual property components, or cores, many of which are programmable proc...
The ever increasing complexity of modern electronic devices together with the continually shrinking time-to-market and product lifetimes pose enormous chip design challenges to meet flexibility, performance and energy efficiency constraints. As a consequence, the current trend is towards programmable platforms (Multi-Processor System-on-Chip Platforms, MP-SoC), which are tailored to the respective target application. In the usual case, a new platform is designed by selecting and assembling standard platform elements.
The first chapters of this book summarize the state of the art in all...
The ever increasing complexity of modern electronic devices together with the continually shrinking time-to-market and product lifetimes pose enorm...
For the first time advances in semiconductor manufacturing do not lead to a corresponding increase in performance. At 65 nm and below it is predicted that only a small portion of performance increase will be attributed to shrinking geometries while the lion share is due to innovative processor architectures. To substantiate this assertion it is instructive to look at major drivers of the semiconductor industry: wireless communications and multimedia. Both areas are characterized by an exponentially increasing demand of computational power, which cannot be provided in an energy-efficient...
For the first time advances in semiconductor manufacturing do not lead to a corresponding increase in performance. At 65 nm and below it is predict...
