Superscalar instruction issue in an asynchronous microprocessor
Philip B. Endecott
Abstract
This paper describes the implementation of the instruction issuer for
a superscalar asynchronous microprocessor, SCALP, as a case study in
asynchronous design. The issuer accepts five instructions at a time
from the memory interface and issues them out of order to five
parallel functional units. SCALP's architecture is designed to reduce
the complexity of the instruction issuer by removing the need to
detect dependencies between instructions as they are issued. The
design has a regular cellular structure suitable for VLSI
implementation. Its performance is sufficient that it does not form a
bottleneck in the SCALP pipeline.
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