Rethinking custom ISE identification: a new processor-agnostic method

The last decade has witnessed the emergence of the Application Specific Instruction-set Processor (ASIP) as a viable platform for embedded systems. Extensible ASIPs allow the user to augment a base processor with Instruction Set Extensions (ISEs) that execute on Application Specific Functional Units (AFUs) - dedicated hardware that executes the ISEs. Due to the limited number of read and write ports in the register file of the base processor, the size and complexity of AFUs are generally limited. Recent work has focused on overcoming these constraints by serialising access to the register file. Apart from these complications, the primary challenge in the identification and selection of the best AFU is the modelling of AFU performance in the context of different base processors: once the base processor changes, the ISE identification and AFU selection process must be redone from scratch. Exhaustive ISE/AFU enumeration methods are not scalable and generally fail for larger applications....

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CASES
• Authors: Ajay K. Verma, Philip Brisk, Paolo Ienne
• Keywords: Base Processor, CASES 2007, Ise Identification, Specific Instruction-Set Processor, System Software