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New application-focused system-on-chip platforms motivate new application-specific processors. Configurable and extensible processor architectures offer the efficiency of tuned logic solutions with the flexibility of standard high-level programming methodology. Automated extension of processor function units and the associated software environment -compilers, debuggers, simulators and real-time operating systems -satisfies these needs. At the same time, designing at the level of software and instruction set architecture significantly shortens the design cycle and reduces verification effort and risk. This paper describes the key dimensions of extensibility within the processor architecture, the instruction set extension description language and the means of automatically extending the software environment from that description. It also describes two groups of benchmarks, EEMBC's Consumer and Telecommunications suites, that show 20 to 40 times acceleration of a broad set of algorithms through application-specific instruction set extension, relative to high performance RISC processors. WHY CONFIGURE PROCESSORS?Two major shifts -one technical, one economic -are changing the design of electronic systems. First, continuing growth in silicon chip capability is rapidly reducing the number of chips in a typical system, and magnifying the size, performance and power benefits of system-on-chip integration. Second, many of the fastest-growing electronics products demand ever-better cost, bandwidth, battery life, and software functionality. These systems -network routers, MP3 players, cell-phones, home gateways, PDAs, and many others -require both full programmability (to manage complexity and rapidly evolving requirements) and high silicon efficiency (for superior application performance per watt, per dollar and per mm 2 ). Application-specific processor cores promise such a combination of full software flexibility with high efficiencyThe demand for application-specific processors creates a paradox for modern system design: how do architects develop new processors that combine the key benefits of generic programmable chips -longevity, development costs amortized over large volume, adaptability to changing market requirements -without taking too much development time or expense. If the cost of fashioning new optimized processors could be radically reduced, then a much broader array of highly refined processor cores could be used in system-on-chip designs.Tensilica enables rapid design of highly efficient processor cores by providing a base architecture, a lean core implementation, and an automated method to seamlessly extend the processor hardware and software to fit each system's application requirements. Processors extended by this methodology close the performance gap between high-overhead general-purpose programmable processors and efficient, specialized hardwareonly solutions based on hardwired-datapath-plus-state-machine logic functions [1]. This methodology also closes the design gap between the rapid, expone...

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This paper focuses on a particular SOC design technology and methodology, here called the advanced or processor-centric SOC design method, which reduces the risk of SOC design and increases ROI by using configurable processors to implement onchip functions while increasing the SOC's flexibility through software programmability. The essential enabler for this design methodology is automatic processor generation-the rapid and easy creation of new microprocessor architectures, complete with efficient hardware designs and comprehensive software tools. The high speed of the generation process and the great flexibility of the generated architectures underpin a fundamental shift of the role of processors in system architecture.

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