Design Challenges for New Application-Specific Processors

This paper discusses research challenges in developing methodologies and tools for the synthesis and analysis of a key component in portable digital communications and multimedia consumer electronics systems, namely, application-specific processors and associated compilers. For such applications it is typically desirable to implement functionality in software, however the penalty in cost/efficiency incurred by using general purpose processors , or even DSPs, may be unacceptable. Very Large Instruction Word (VLIW) Application Specific Instruction-Set Processors (ASIPs) realize cost/efficiency tradeoffs that can be very attractive for this market. However, difficulties with ASIP design and current compiler technology pose significant obstacles to this technology. In this paper we discuss these challenges and propose a framework to jointly address (1) the synthesis of VLIW ASIPs, and (2) the development of high-quality retargetable compilers for such specialized processors.