Tensilica, Inc.

Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

Ricardo E Gonzalez

Earl A Killian

Walter David Lichtenstein

Albert Ren-Rui Wang

Dror E Maydan

Robert P Wilson

Christopher Rowen

John C Ruttenberg

Ashish B Dixit

Monica Lam

Akilesh Parameswar

David W Goodwin

Pavlos Konas

Christopher Mark Songer

Rangarajan Srinivasan

Richard Ruddell

Nupur Bhattacharyya

Marines Puig Medina

Albert RenRui Wang

James Alexander Stuart Fiske

Dror Eliezer Maydan

A system for generating processor hardware supports a language for significant extensions to the processor instruction set, where the designer specifies only the semantics of the new instructions and the system generates other logic. The extension language provides for the addition of processor state, including register files, and instructions that operate on that state. The language also provides for new data types to be added to the compiler to represent the state added. It allows separate specification of reference semantics and instruction implementation, and uses this to automate design verification. In addition, the system generates formatted instruction set documentation from the language specification.

Automated processor generation system and method for designing a configurable processor

An automated processor design tool uses a description of customized processor instruction set extensions in a standardized language to develop a configurable definition of a target instruction set, a Hardware Description Language description of circuitry necessary to implement the instruction set, and development tools such as a compiler, assembler, debugger and simulator which can be used to develop applications for the processor and to verify it. Implementation of the processor circuitry can be optimized for various criteria such as area, power consumption, speed and the like. Once a processor configuration is developed, it can be tested and inputs to the system modified to iteratively optimize the processor implementation. By providing a constrained domain of extensions and optimizations, the process can be automated to a high degree, thereby facilitating fast and reliable development.

System and method of designing instruction extensions to supplement an existing processor instruction set architecture

System and method of customizing an existing processor design having an existing processor instruction set architecture with instruction extensions

Automated processor generation system for designing a configurable processor and method for the same

A processor generation system includes the ability to describe processors with three instruction sizes. In one example implementation, instructions can be 16-, 24- and 64-bits. This enables a new range of architectures that can exploit parallelism in architectures. In particular, this enables the generation of VLIW architectures. According to another aspect, the processor generator allows a designer to add a configurable number of load/store units to the processor. In order to accommodate multiple load/store units, local memories connected to the processor can have multiple read and write ports (one for each load/store unit). This further allows the local memories to be connected in any arbitrary connection topology. Connection box hardware is automatically generated that provides an interface between the load/store units and the local memories based on the configuration.

System and method for generating a configurable processor supporting a user-defined plurality of instruction sizes

A system for adding advanced instructions to a microprocessor includes a language for formally capturing the new instructions and a method for generating hardware implementations and software tools for the extended processors. The extension language provides for additions of VLIW instructions, complex load/store instructions, more powerful description styles using functions, more powerful register operands, and a new set of built-in modules. The method is capable of generating fully-pipelined micro-architectural implementations for the new instructions in the form of synthesizable HDL descriptions which can be processed by standard CAD tools. The method is also capable of generating software components for extending software development tools for the microprocessor with new instructions.

Method and apparatus for adding advanced instructions in an extensible processor architecture

A RISC processor implements an instruction set which, in addition to optimizing a relationship between the number of instructions required for execution of a program, clock period and average number of clocks per instruction, also is designed to optimize the equation S&equals;IS * BI, where S is the size of program instructions in bits, IS is the static number of instructions required to represent the program (not the number required by an execution) and BI is the average number of bits per instruction. Compared to conventional RISC architectures, this processor lowers both BI and IS with minimal increases in clock period and average number of clocks per instruction. The processor provides good code density in a fixed-length high-performance encoding based on RISC principles, including a general register with load/store architecture. Further, the processor implements a simple variable-length encoding that maintains high performance.

High data density RISC processor

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Menlo Park, CA, United States of America

Ricardo E Gonzalez