Product category: Intellectual Property Cores
News Release from: MIPS Technologies | Subject: MIPS32 1004K coherent processing system
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 02 April 2008
Multiprocessor core incorporates
multithreading
The 1004K core optimises CPU performance on a shared memory system, enabling multiple functions and applications to be implemented in a single product.
MIPS Technologies has released the MIPS32 1004K coherent processing system, the industry's first embedded multithreaded, multiprocessor licensable IP core Up to four single- or multithreaded processors integrated with advanced system coherency
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 23 Feb 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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"There is growing demand for processor performance in embedded applications", said Christian Heidarson, Principal Analyst for the semiconductor group of Gartner.
"Traditional frequency scaling is limited by power constraints, so additional performance must be achieved through parallelism".
"For highest efficiency, combining multithreading and coherent multicore has great potential".
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MIPS Technologies has a performance advantage inherent in its single core processors.
MIPS has optimised single core performance by maximising single-pipeline efficiency via multithreading in the MIPS32 34K core, as well as achieving increased processor headroom and generating 1GHz+ frequencies with a superscalar, out-of-order pipeline in its 74K core.
For many high-volume embedded applications, the need for significantly higher performance levels is now driving a move to coherent multicore implementations that minimise system resources and maximise SoC performance on mainstream silicon processes and clock speeds.
The 1004K core optimises CPU performance on a shared memory system, enabling multiple functions and applications to be implemented in a single product - all running concurrently and responsively under symmetric multiprocessing (SMP)-based operating systems.
"With our multicore solution, MIPS Technologies offers designers two paths to higher performance for next-generation embedded applications - the 74K core for the fastest, single-threaded application, or the 1004K core for coherent multiprocessing scalable to even higher levels of performance", said John Derrick, President and General Manager of the Processor Business Group, MIPS Technologies.
"MIPS Technologies is now positioned to offer customers a multithreaded coherent multiprocessing solution, the industry's highest performance cores with advanced cache coherency and multiprocessing support and one of the richest ecosystems for products in the digital living room and beyond".
The 1004K coherent processing system helps lower SoC development costs, since for many applications, fewer processors are needed than with other multiprocessor solutions.
Multithreading in each CPU provides significant performance gains compared to single-threaded multiprocessor offerings.
A range of key vertical applications, including digital home entertainment, home networking and office automation, will benefit from coherent multiprocessing using multithreading.
In addition, the 1004K core offers a range of options for increased design flexibility.
Designers can add CPUs to scale performance for their specific application requirements.
The multicore coherence manager (CM), the foundation block for intelligent system coherency, is configurable for one to four single or multithreaded cores with an I/O coherence unit (IOCU) that provides optional hardware coherence for I/O peripherals to remove the overhead of implementing this function in software.
The 1004K core alos provides a highly scalable performance migration path for the MIPS32 24K and 34K core families.
As the 1004K core is MIPS32-compliant, it allows designers to take advantage of existing software.
The MIPS32 1004Kc provides a coherent processing system using base integer cores and the MIPS32 1004Kf uses integer cores plus floating point units.
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