Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: CoWare | Subject: Corxpert Personality Kit for MIPS32 24K Pro
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 17 June 2005
Kit creates custom MIPS instructions
CoWare has created its first Corxpert Personality Kit for the MIPS32 24K Pro Series cores.
CoWare has created its first Corxpert Personality Kit for the MIPS32 24K Pro Series cores CoWare Corxpert is an automated technology that lets designers quickly develop application specific instructions for their MIPS Pro Series cores for improved processor performance and product differentiation
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 15 May 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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Corxpert for the 24K Pro Series cores facilitates use of MIPS Technologies' powerful CorExtend capability, a feature of its Pro Series cores that accelerates software applications running on a MIPS processor by adding new instructions with an optimised computing block tightly coupled to the integer pipeline.
Application performance gains of 3x to 10x can typically be realised with the CorExtend capability.
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"CoWare's electronic system-level technology will enable our customers to more easily take advantage of the powerful and flexible CorExtend capability without manual implementation", said Gideon Intrater, Vice President of Solutions Architecture, MIPS Technologies.
"In today's cost and time-sensitive markets, product differentiation is essential".
"We are pleased with this new technology that allows customers to leverage their application expertise by developing custom instructions for our MIPS processors, making their product more competitive in the market".
"Especially in the multimedia, wireless and consumer electronics markets, product manufacturers are under increasing pressure to use software as a key differentiator, in turn driving demand for higher performance processors", said AK Kalekos, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at CoWare.
"CoWare is excited to be working with MIPS Technologies, one of the leading providers of processor IP, to enable increased functionality of their high performance processors".
"Through this collaboration, customers get the best of both worlds: high performance along with easy customisation for their target applications".
Users start by profiling their application code using their existing software development tools.
Then they decide which part of the application needs to be accelerated and identify what instructions can be defined to improve performance.
Using Corxpert, they can quickly and graphically define the behaviour of each new instruction.
Pipeline interaction of the instruction with the main processor can also be defined.
In some cases, adding a new instruction can be as simple as cutting and pasting the original application code into the instruction-behaviour window of the GUI.
Corxpert then automatically generates an instruction set simulator (ISS) for the developed instructions and software configuration files and libraries for the existing compiler/tools.
This enables the existing software development tools to know about the developed instructions.
The next steps include re-running the application, iterating through profiling and developing additional instructions until the desired performance is reached.
Corxpert generates the RTL implementation of the instructions, as well as the interface logic required to integrate the CorExtend block to the main processor.
Physical synthesis scripts are created to allow easy access to synthesis tools and to extract information on frequency and area for the target technology.
The user can then decide on the optimal trade-off between additional performance and silicon area.
Finally, documentation of the additional instructions is created automatically, to provide other software developers with the necessary information to take advantage of the new instructions in their application development.
CoWare Corxpert for the MIPS32 24K Pro Series cores is available now from CoWare.
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