MAgic-FPU and MADE: A customizable VLIW core and the modular VLIW processor architecture description environment

Abstract

mAgic-FPU is the architecture of a family of VLIW cores for configurable system level integration of floating and fixed point computing power. mAgic customization permits the designer to tune basic parameters, such as the computing power/memory access ratio of the core processor, the number of available arithmetic operation per cycle, the register file size and number of port, as well as of the number of arithmetic operators. The reconfiguration (e.g., of register file size and number of port, as well as of the number of arithmetic operators) is supported by the software environment MADE (Modular VLIW processor Architecture and Assembler Description Environment). MADE reads an architecture description file and produces a customized assembler-scheduler for the target VLIW architecture, configuring a general purpose VLIW optimizer-scheduler engine. The mAgic-FPU core architecture satisfies the requisite of portability among silicon foundries. The first members of the mAgic FPU core family architecture fit the requirements of ‘Smart Antenna for Adaptive Beam-Forming processing’ and ‘Physical Sound Synthesis’. The first 1 GigaFlops mAgic core will run at 100 MHz within an area of 40 mm 2 in 0.25 μm ATMEL CMOS technology in first half 2002.