Implementation of an embedded dual-core processor for portable medical electronics applications

Algorithm specifications drive the computation capability requirements of processor in wearable and portable medical devices. This paper presents an embedded dual-core processor, named dual-core processor unification (IMS-DPU), in which two PKU-DSP II RISC cores are embedded for increased computation complexity and enhanced functionality as well as a snoop control unit (SCU) to maintain cache coherency and an on-chip debug (OCD) unit to support in-circuit debug. The instruction set is specifically extended for medical electronics applications, and abundant inter-core communication mechanisms are provided. The redesigned control path reduces the area and power consumption. FPGA prototyping results show the correctness of the design, and it is synthesized by CSMC 180nm CMOS technology process with a clock frequency of 100 MHz and 999.5K equivalent logic gates, including 42KB memory.