Toshiba Develops High Performance Microprocessor
Core
-‘MeP-h1’is the World’s First 1GHz Configurable Processor-
Toshiba Corporation has announced that it has developed a new high-end processor core, MeP-h1, the first configurable microprocessor to achieve a 1GHz clock speed. The MeP-h1 is based on Toshiba’s “Media embedded Processor” (MeP) architecture for digital consumer and other high performance SoCs. It gives designers the flexibility to customize processors at the design stage, including the ability to change processor configurations and add custom instructions to satisfy application requirements.
The performance of the new core was boosted by increasing the number of instruction execution pipeline stages to nine, from five in Toshiba’s previous processor core. The new core is also optimized for design of high-performance customized processors by integration of a reorder buffer circuit that manages and shortens waiting cycles for user extension instructions. The present implementation of the core was manufactured with 65nanometer (nm) process technology, and that too contributed to achieving the 1GHz clock speed. The new configurable processor core is designed with register transfer level description (RTL) and can be manufactured with other process technology, including 90nm technology.
Development background:
The market for digital equipment supporting images, audio and communications is growing fast. However, the required performance and type of data processing in system LSI differs by application, and the overall volume of handled data is rapidly increasing. As a result, there is growing demand for customizable
