Customisable EPIC processor: architecture and tools

This paper describes a customisable architecture and the associated tools for a prototype EPIC (explicitly parallel instruction computing) processor. Possible customisations include varying the number of registers and functional units, which are specified at compile-time. This facilitates the exploration of performance/area trade-off for different EPIC implementations. We describe the tools for this EPIC processor, which include a compiler and an assembler based on the trimaran framework. Various pipelined EPIC designs have been implemented using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs); the one with 4 ALUs at 41.8 MHz can run a DCT application 5 times faster than the strongARM SA-110 processor at 100 MHz.