Instruction-set Selection for Multi-application based ASIP Design: An Instruction-level Study

摘要

Efficiency in embedded systems is paramount to achieve high performance whileconsuming less area and power. Processors in embedded systems have to bedesigned carefully to achieve such design constraints. Application SpecificInstruction set Processors (ASIPs) exploit the nature of applications to designan optimal instruction set. Despite being not general to execute anyapplication, ASIPs are highly preferred in the embedded systems industry wherethe devices are produced to satisfy a certain type of application domain/s(either intra-domain or inter-domain). Typically, ASIPs are designed from abase-processor and functionalities are added for applications. This paperstudies the multi-application ASIPs and their instruction sets, extensivelyanalysing the instructions for inter-domain and intra-domain designs. Metricsanalysed are the reusable instructions and the extra cost to add a certainapplication. A wide range of applications from various application benchmarks(MiBench, MediaBench and SPEC2006) and domains are analysed for two differentarchitectures (ARM-Thumb and PISA). Our study shows that the intra-domainapplications contain larger number of common instructions, whereas theinter-domain applications have very less common instructions, regardless of thearchitecture (and therefore the ISA).