Low Power ASIP Architecture Optimization based on Target Application Profiling

Abstract

This paper describes design of application specific instruction-set processors (ASIP). We implement three ASIPs including signal processor for OFDM communication systems (SPOCS), video specific instruction-set processor (VSIP) and digital audio specific instruction-set processor (DASIP). Our ASIPs have novel instructions and optimized hardware architectures for specific applications. Our ASIPs can have much smaller area and dramatically reduce the numbers of memory accesses compared with commercial DSP chips, which result in low power consumption. All of the proposed ASIPs have been thoroughly verified using the Xilinx XC2v6000 FPGA and one of the implemented ASIPs has been already employed in a digital home theater SoC.