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

mAgic-FPU is the architecture of a family of VLIW cores for configurable sy stem level integration of floating and fixed point computing power. mAgic c ustomization permits the designer to tune basic parameters, such as the com puting power/memory access ratio of the core processor, the number of avail able arithmetic operation per cycle, the register file size and number of p ort, 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 (Mod ular VLIW processor Architecture and Assembler Description Environment). MA DE reads an architecture description file and produces a customized assembl er-scheduler for the target VLIW architecture, configuring a general purpos e VLIW optimizer-scheduler engine. The mAgic-FPU core architecture satisfie s the requisite of portability among silicon foundries. The first members o f the mAgic FPU core family architecture fit the requirements of 'Smart Ant enna 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 m m(2) in 0.25 mum ATMEL CMOS technology in first half 2002. (C) 2001 Elsevie r Science B.V. All rights reserved.