On-chip multiprocessor with simultaneous multithreading

As more transistors are integrated onto bigger die, an on-chip multiprocess or will become a promising alternative to the superscalar microprocessor th at dominates today's microprocessor marketplace. This paper describes key p arts of a new on-chip multiprocessor, called Raptor, which is composed of f our 2-way superscalar processor cores and one graphic co-processor. To obta in performance characteristics of Raptor, a program-driven simulator and it s programming environment were developed. The simulation results showed tha t Raptor can exploit thread level parallelism effectively and offer a promi sing architecture for future on-chip multiprocessor designs.