Intel Corporation

Thu Nguyen

Ruban Kanapathippillai

Kumar Ganapathy

Earle F Philhower, Iii

Manoj Mehta

Siva Venkatraman

Kenneth Malich

Method and apparatus for reducing power consumption in a digital specific signal processor integrated circuit. Data buses are routed through multiplexers to reduce the number of busses routed across an integrated circuit and maintain their prior state. Global memory is clustered into memory clusters. The memory cluster having a memory block to be accessed is activated without activating other memory clusters in the global memory. Inactive data buses retain their state by use of bus state keepers. A loop buffer stores instructions within program loops to avoid memory accesses. Functional blocks can have their clocks gated instruction by instruction to lower power consumption. RISC and DSP units swap circuit activity to reduce power consumption. Local data memory is includes self-timed memory access activation and provides for off boundary access to further lower power consumption.

IC memory complex with controller for clusters of memory blocks I/O multiplexed using collar logic

An integrated circuit comprising a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) controller to execute RISC instructions, one or more digital signal processing (DSP) units to execute DSP instructions, and a unified instruction pipeline coupled to the RISC controller and the one or more DSP units, the unified instruction pipeline to decode and initiate execution of the RISC instructions and the DSP instructions of a unified RISC and DSP instruction set, the unified instruction pipeline to decode and initiate the RISC instructions when the DSP instructions are inactive, and to decode and initiate the DSP instructions when the RISC instructions are inactive.

Unified shared pipeline allowing deactivation of RISC/DSP units for power saving

Bus state keepers to maintain a steady state of an inactive bus to conserve power. In one embodiment of the invention, the bus state keepers include a plurality of multiplexers and a plurality of flip flops. The plurality of flip flops to store a state of a bus in response to a select signal.

Bus state keepers

Disclosed is a method and apparatus for an off boundary memory to provide off boundary memory access. The off boundary memory includes a right memory array having a plurality of right memory rows and a left memory array having a plurality of left memory rows. This forms a memory having a plurality of row lines, each row line having a right memory row and a left memory row, respectively. An off boundary row address decoder is coupled to both the right and left memory arrays and is capable of performing an off boundary memory access which includes accessing a desired plurality of memory addresses from one of a right or left memory row of a row line and from one of a left or right memory row of an adjacent row line at substantially the same time within one memory access cycle.

Method and apparatus for off boundary memory access

A self timed logic circuit is used to generate a self timed memory clock to access data in a memory. The self timed memory clock has a periodic pulse which enables circuitry in the memory for a brief period of time over its pulse width. The amount of charge and voltage change, required on bit lines for resolving a bit of data stored in a memory cell during the pulse width of the self timed memory clock, is reduced by using a sensitive sense amplifier so that power can be conserved.

Self-timed activation logic for memory

In one embodiment, a bus multiplexer is between a memory and a functional unit of the integrated circuit. An input of the bus multiplexer couples to a global bus having a bit width. A local bus having a lesser bit width couples to an output of the bus multiplexer. The bus multiplexer selectively multiplexes bits of data on the global bus onto bits of the local bus. In another embodiment, an integrated circuit comprises a memory, a global bus, and a functional unit coupled together. The functional unit includes a bus multiplexer with an input coupled to the global bus, and a local bus coupled to an output of the bus multiplexer. The bus width of the local bus is less than that of the global bus. The bus multiplexer selects data from a subset of bits of the global bus to couple onto the bits of the local bus.

Growing community of inventors

Saratoga, CA, United States of America

Thu Nguyen