System-on-chip designers can use configurable processors to leverage the benefits of nanometer silicon lithography with relatively little manual effort. These processors can achieve much higher performance than processors with conventional fixed-instruction-set architectures through the addition of custom-tailored execution units, registers, and register files as well as specialized communication interface ports.
Index Terms:
multiprocessor systems, configurable processors, MPSoCs, nanometer silicon lithography, microprocessors
Citation:
Steve Leibson, James Kim, "Configurable Processors: A New Era in Chip Design," Computer, vol. 38, no. 7, pp. 51-59, July 2005, doi:10.1109/MC.2005.226