By
Steve Leibson, Technology Evangelist, Tensilica, Inc, Santa Clara, CA, USA
Description
Microprocessor cores used for SOC design are the direct descendents of Intel’s original 4004 microprocessor. Just as packaged microprocessor
ICs vary widely in their attributes, so do microprocessors packaged as IP cores. However, SOC designers still compare and select processor
cores the way they previously compared and selected packaged microprocessor ICs. The big problem with this selection method is that it
assumes that the laws of the microprocessor universe have remained unchanged for decades. This assumption is no longer valid.
Processor
cores for SOC designs can be far more plastic than microprocessor ICs for board-level system designs. Shaping these cores for specific
applications produces much better processor efficiency and much lower system clock rates. Together, Tensilica’s Xtensa and Diamond processor
cores constitute a family of software-compatible microprocessors covering an extremely wide performance range from simple control processors,
to DSPs, to 3-way superscalar processors. Yet all of these processors use the same software-development tools so that programmers familiar
with one processor in the family can easily switch to another.
This book emphasizes a processor-centric MPSOC (multiple-processor
SOC) design style shaped by the realities of the 21st-century and nanometer silicon. It advocates the assignment of tasks to firmware-controlled
processors whenever possible to maximize SOC flexibility, cut power dissipation, reduce the size and number of hand-built logic blocks,
shrink the associated verification effort, and minimize the overall design risk.
Included in series
Systems on Silicon
Audience:
PRIMARY: Industry practitioners; System-on-Chip engineers designing embedded systems.
SECONDARY: Text for undergraduate and graduate level courses on Embedded Systems.
