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Microprocessor Architectures: From VLIW to TTA

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Clear, complete description of TTA

Microprocessor Architectures: From VLIW to TTA
Henk Corporaal
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Power Estimation and Optimization Methodologies for VLIW-based Embedded Systems

ASIN: 047197157X

Book Description

Exploring new trends in computer technology, Corporal introduces an innovative and exciting concept: Transport Triggered Architecture (TTAs). Unlike most traditional architectures, where programmed operations trigger internal data transports, TTAs function through programming the data transports themselves. As a result the new architecture alleviates bottlenecks, allows for new code-generation optimizations and exploits hardware more efficiently. Founded on the author’s recent research, this book evaluates the attributes of different classes of architectures. It demonstrates how TTAs can be used as a template for automatic generation of application-specific processors and highlights their suitability for embedded system design. Several commercial TTA implementations have proven its concepts and advantages.

Features includes:

Complexity analysis of the data path of Instruction Level Parallel processors, particularly of VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) and super-pipelined processors
Derivation of the transport triggering concept illustrating processor simplification
In-depth analysis of the architecture design space of TTAs and evaluation of architecture parameters
Examination of the control and pipelining of instruction, function and register units
Description of a trajectory for the automatic synthesis of TTAs for arbitrary applications written in a high-level language
Detailed description of a prototype TTA processor enabling the reader to design an embedded computer system with excellent cost-performance ratio

Microprocessor Architectures is cutting-edge text which will prove invaluable to both industrial hardware and software engineers involved in embedded system design and to postgraduate electrical engineering and computer science students. This clearly-structured reference demonstrates the versatility of TTAs and explores their influential role in the next generation of computer architecture.

Customer Reviews:

Clear, complete description of TTA.......2006-09-22

Corporaal's book gives the only description I know of transport-triggrered architectures (TTAs). TTAs are a bit like dataflow architectures, in the way they initiate action by setting up operands and in the way they pass data directly between function units. TTAs have VLIW-like program memory and a PC, though, for orchestrating the data transport. Like so many other ideas in computing, this had its moment then sank into obscurity.

And now rises again in the world of reconfigurable computing. The thing about TTA is its scalability - you can keep adding busses and function units until your compiler can't find enough for them to do, or you can do the same job with less hardware but more cycles. That's the kind of tradeoff that logic designers love, and it's right up fron in the TTA concept.

This book, possibly an extension of Corporaal's dissertation, covers the topic in exhaustive detail. It starts with background material on typical architectures including VLIW - a brief intro, at less than 100 pages, but detailed enough for RC timing analyses of familiar structures. The next short section introduces the TTA concept and an ASIC realization. Chapters 7 through 10 present the real meat of the discussion: the different subsystems in a TTA and design space exploration in each. This section includes exception processing. That's important for a general purpose processor, but overkill for typical dedicated, embedded, application-specific processors. The last section of the main text deals with integration of the parts, including lengthy discussion of instruction scheduling and how specific features of the register arrays, program store, and bus structure affect scheduling. Appendices cover details that may be of interest, but would have bogged down the main discussion.

The basic ideas can be said in a lot fewer than this book's 400 pages. This isn't for someone who wants the "elevator talk," though. It's for someone who already understands a wide range of traditional processors, but faces non-traditional problems. TTAs won't be the best answer to every need. When they do meet your demand, you'll appreciate the regular, scalable structure and the wide range of performance options they give you. TTA is another great tool to have in your configurable computing toolbox.

//wiredweird

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