Design of Energy-Efficient Application-Specific Instruction Set Processors

by Tilman Glokler, Heinrich Meyr, Tilman Glc6kler

Application-specific instruction set processors (ASIPs) have a high potential to become one of the most important building blocks of future ASIC designs as they combine the flexibility of software with the energy-efficiency and scalable computational performance of dedicated hardware implementations. This book, written for both, the practicing ASIC design engineer and the embedded software developer, provides a clear and comprehensive coverage of best-practice ASIP hard- and software design.After a brief introduction to low-power VLSI design, the design space of ASIP instruction set architectures (ISAs) is introduced with a special focus on important features for digital signal processing. Based on the degrees of freedom offered by this design space, a consistent ASIP design flow is proposed: this design flow starts with a given application and uses incremental optimization of the ASIP hardware, of ASIP coprocessors and of the ASIP software by using a top-down approach and by applying application-specific modifications on all levels of design hierarchy. A broad range of real-world signal processing applications serves as vehicle to illustrate each design decision and provides a hands-on approach to ASIP design. Finally, two complete case studies demonstrate the feasibility and the efficiency of the proposed methodology and quantitatively evaluate the benefits of ASIPs in an industrial context.

Kindle Edition

First published February 29, 2004