Title
Instruction set architectural guidelines for embedded packet-processing engines
Abstract
This paper presents instruction set architectural guidelines for improving general-purpose embedded processors to optimally accommodate packet-processing applications. Similar to other embedded processors such as media processors, packet-processing engines are deployed in embedded applications, where cost and power are as important as performance. In this domain, the growing demands for higher bandwidth and performance besides the ongoing development of new networking protocols and applications call for flexible power- and performance-optimized engines. The instruction set architectural guidelines are extracted from an exhaustive simulation-based profile-driven quantitative analysis of different packet-processing workloads on 32-bit versions of two well-known general-purpose processors, ARM and MIPS. This extensive study has revealed the main performance challenges and tradeoffs in development of evolution path for survival of such general-purpose processors with optimum accommodation of packet-processing functions for future switching-intensive applications. Architectural guidelines include types of instructions, branch offset size, displacement and immediate addressing modes for memory access along with the effective size of these fields, data types of memory operations, and also new branch instructions. The effectiveness of the proposed guidelines is evaluated with the development of a retargetable compilation and simulation framework. Developing the HDL model of the optimized base processor for networking applications and using a logic synthesis tool, we show that enhanced area, power, delay, and power per watt measures are achieved.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1016/j.sysarc.2012.02.004
Journal of Systems Architecture - Embedded Systems Design
Keywords
Field
DocType
general-purpose embedded processor,architectural guideline,flexible power,embedded packet-processing engine,general-purpose processor,packet-processing engine,embedded processor,embedded application,packet-processing function,packet-processing application,different packet-processing workloads
Logic synthesis,Instruction set,Computer science,Embedded applications,Real-time computing,Data type,Computer architecture,Parallel computing,Bandwidth (signal processing),Packet processing,Addressing mode,Offset (computer science),Embedded system
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
58
3-4
1383-7621
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.39
24
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mostafa E. Salehi111113.74
Sied Mehdi Fakhraie213315.73
Amir Yazdanbakhsh324115.28