200-MHz superscalar RISC microprocessor

Design and implementation details of the MIPS R10000, 200-MHz, 64-b superscalar dynamic issue RISC microprocessor is presented. It fetches and decodes four instructions per cycle and dynamically issues them to five fully pipelined, low latency execution units, Its hierarchical nonblocking memory system helps hide memory latency with two levels of set-associative, write-back caches. The processor has over 6.8 M transistors and is built in 3.3-V, 0.30 /spl mu/m, four-layer metal CMOS technology with under 30 W of power consumption. The processor delivers peak performance of Spec95int of 9 and Spec95fp of 19 operating at 200 MHz. Clock and power distribution as well as circuit design techniques of several blocks are addressed.