Imagine that the earth's rotation
became unpredictable and varied
between one and 100 hours. What
effects would this have on life as we
know it? Utter chaos would ensue, and
many species would cease to exist.
With ICs, chaos leading to failure is
guaranteed if you try to use a replacement IP block or core that isn't "cycle
accurate" to improve speed, reduce power usage, and decrease area. In fact, if
you try to use such a block or core, you
probably will have to redesign and retest
a large percentage of the design.
Intrinsity addresses this chaos with its
cycle-accurate drop-in replacements for
embedded processor IP cores. Known as
FastCores, they offer significant performance boosts at roughly the same area
and MIPS per milliwatt while preserving
the same application software and test
infrastructure (). The company's
AMCC Titan core offers 4000 DMIPS at 2 GHz while consuming less than 2.5 W.
The FastCores use Fast14 technology, which provides cell-based 1-of-N domino
logic. In this circuit configuration, logic
values are propagated from stage to
stage with the aid of a clock to both preset all of the stages during one phase of
the clock and change state during the
other phase.
1-of-N encoding logic is similar to one-hot encoding, where only one wire in a
given group of N may represent a logic
high (1) value while the rest must remain
logic low (0), except when all wires are
logic low, indicating the pre-charge (preset) state. This encoding technique also
can be compared to standard binary and
dual-rail dynamic logic ().
This technology enables faster performance by a factor of three compared
to standard static logic using the same
process, lower area, and lower power
implementations over conventional
CMOS design approaches. Fast14's other
benefits include reliable timing through
the use of multiphased, overlapping
clocks, noise mitigation by way of signal-aware routing, customizable transistor
sizing to control power and source current, and scalability to at least 32 nm.
The FastCores and Fast14 may be
licensed on a project, product family, or
company-wide basis. RTL-based FastCores are available to existing core
licensees. They don't require the licensing of new core architectures. Intrinsity
charges a nominal nonrecurring-engineering fee and an incremental royalty
on sales of FastCore-based processors.
Intrinsity
www.intrinsity.com