Research On Retargetable Application Specific Instruction Set Processor (ASIP) Simulation And Evaluation

Application Specific Instruction Set Processors (ASIP) have their root in classic ISA processor and fufill the design demands for the application in different attributes, such as function, cost, power and reliability, through approaches to parallel processing, elements of special purpose hardware, structure of memory architectures, etc. ASIPs are more flexible and efficient. But they haven't been wide used by now due to lack of methodology and toolset suitable for ASIP design. In the thesis, we make a systematic and thorough study on the ASIP simulation and evaluation, the key issue on ASIP design methodology. The main results and contributions of this thesis are as follows:(1) A novel ASIP model xpMODEL and dual-engine simulation methodology are presented to realize ASIP retargetable simulation. xpMODEL is an ASIP simulation model which is of three-level structure. It takes instruction as design core, and supports the description of complex pipelining, different processing levels and specific hardware. Furthermore, it can ensure the accurate simulation of architecture. According to the structure of xpMODEL, dual-egine simulator simulates the instruction behavior and micro-architecture operation. It also implements the simulation of instruction scheduling and operation timing based on ASAP strategy, thus to ensure retargetability of simulation. The techniques presented in this paper are superior to existed ones in simulation accuracy, simulation complexity and the implementation complexity of retargetability.(2) A novel system-level power model is presented to support system-level power evaluation. This system-level power model includes three levels, an input-sensetive power model corresponding to micro-architecture-accurate simulation to support hardware optimization, an average unit power model corresponding to cycle-accurate simulation to support pipeline design, an instruction-level model corresponding to instruction-accurate simulation to support software optimization. This model is accurate and efficient to evaluate the ASIP design on system level. In the process of constructing system level power model, we proposed some new methods such as...