Design and Architecture for Low-Power/High-Speed RISC Microprocessor: SuperH

摘要

This paper describes the design and architecture for a newly developed microprocessor suitable for consumer applications, which we call SuperH. To achieve both low-power and high-speed, the SuperH architecture includes 16-bit fixed length instruction code and several power saving features. The 16-bit fixed length instruction code makes the SuperH possible to achieve excellent code efficiency for the SPECint benchmarks when compared with conventional microcontrollers and RISC's for workstations and PC's. As a result, the SuperH provides almost the same code efficiency as that of 8-bit microcontrollers, and also achieves similar performance as that of RISC's with 32-bit fixed length instruction code. The SuperH also incorporates several power reduction techniques through the control of clock frequency and clock distribution. Thus, the 16-bit code format, power saving features, and other architectural innovations make the SuperH particularly proficient for portable multi-media applications.