Product category: Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) | Subject: HyperStreaming
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 14 March 2003

HyperStreaming architecture for faster multimedia

A new HyperStreaming architecture aims to meet the demands of high-speed computing as well as a wider range of streaming multimedia, online broadcasting and Internet networking applications

Silicon Integrated Systems has launched a new HyperStreaming architecture to meet the demands of high-speed computing as well as a wider range of streaming multimedia, online broadcasting and Internet networking applications. The powerful HyperStreaming technology is being demonstrated with the new SiS748 chipset.

HyperStreaming is a further development of SiS's MuTOL technology that provides a throughput of 1.2Gbyte between the internal north and south bridges and the external PCI interface to promote smoother operation to all external peripherals.

With HyperStreaming, the system streams are connected from a device control terminal to the connecting terminal of north and south bridges, then from the connecting terminal of the north and south bridges to the FSB and from the FSB to the memory or graphics interface.

This complete integrated solution delivers more efficient control and improved performance.

HyperStreaming integrates four technologies.

Single stream with low latency technology enables a single stream to respond promptly and reduce the latency in PC systems.

For normal user access to the hard drive through the DMA, this can lower the latency by at least 5% compared with other platforms.

And when executing simple access it can be reduced by as much as 43%, presenting significant response time advantages to users and programme developers.

Multiple stream with pipelining and concurrent execution technology with its integrated concurrent parallel structure effectively widens the bandwidth of data transmission and simultaneously processes nonsequential data to improve the performance of a system, bringing about more flexible operation of all peripherals.

For example, when users copy and paste 1Gbyte files between two hard drives, HyperStreaming can improve their performance by up to 15% compared with other platforms.

However, when the file size increases to 4Gbyte, HyperStreaming can reduce the time by as much as 47s, which represents a performance increase of 35%.

Specific stream with prioritised channel technology distinguishes between music and images downloaded from the Internet and allocates bandwidth and piping for listening or viewing.

This means that Internet users can avoid discontinuities when using popular applications such as IP phones, online digital broadcasting, and videoconferences.

With FTP, a commonly used Internet data transmission protocol, throughput can be increased by at least 4% compared with other platforms and response time can also be reduced by at least 4.4%.

And for HTTP, throughput can be increased by at least 3% compared with other platforms and response time cut by at least 2.6%.

Smart stream flow control technology can bring about more efficient streaming and even expand the space of processor access through effective throughput control, based on different protocols and characteristics, when dealing with the external chipset interface.

This technology in turn increases the efficiency of throughput processing and execution of a system.

For example, when dealing with memory access interface, the system can optimise read-write alignment based on the characteristics of the memory interface to reduce turnaround time and row conflicts, while at the same time raise hit rate by access locality increase and relocation.

The advantages of the HyperStreaming impact not only on the connecting bandwidth of the north and south bridges, but also in the effective extension of its concurrency concept to the device terminals.

For example, in HyperStreaming, all the device control terminals have read-read-pipeline and read-write-concurrent.

Because a single device itself provides substantial concurrency, with additional HyperStreaming it can distinguish access to every terminal and provide specific piping, enabling concurrent operations.

This results in an adequate and better concurrency from device terminals to the connecting part of the north and south bridges and the connection between the north and south bridges.

The realisation of such a concept in piping of the north bridge and between the north bridge and other interfaces is a major advantage of HyperStreaming, based on new Smart Stream technology.

Smart Stream includes three functions: smart arbitration, smart streaming flow control and fluent data transmission, which categorises data, identifies its characteristics, increases the flow and knows how to reduce waiting and read-write turnaround time.

As a result, with commands and data scheduling, it cannot only bring about higher efficiency of the CPU and communication with its surrounding devices, but also increases the data transmission speed between the CPU and chipsets, improving the performance of the PC system.

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