SamsungSamsung and Intrinsity develop 1 GHz Hummingbird Processor

Samsung and Intrinsity develop 1 GHz Hummingbird Processor

Samsung Hummingbird Processor Samsung and Intrinsity have jointly introduced the fastest mobile processor core implementation of the dual-issue ARM Cortex-A8 processor architecture in 45nm Low Power (LP), low leakage process technology. The Cortex-A8 implementation, known as Hummingbird, offers 2000DMIPS at 1GHz.

The processor offers 32KB of data and instruction caches, an L2 cache of customizable size, and an ARM NEON multi-media extension. Performance and power consumption of the processor have been authenticated in silicon. Presently, Samsung is designing mobile SoC products by means of these processors.

“The biggest challenge in mobile processor core design and implementation is to achieve high clock speed performance while keeping the power consumption low. Collaboration between Samsung and Intrinsity combines the best design and implementation technologies in the industry in successfully meeting the aggressive performance and power consumption targets of the Hummingbird. Samsung’s forthcoming SOC products which are based on the Hummingbird will enable our customers to add many more advanced processing capabilities to their mobile products without sacrificing battery life,” mentioned Dr. Jae Cheol Son, Vice President, SOC Platform Development, System LSI Division, Samsung Electronics.

The processor employs a semi-custom design flow which makes use of Intrinsity’s custom designed circuit/memory structures, a set of customized primitive cells, and an enhanced RTL FastCore and Fast14 high-speed domino logic, to provide1GHz operating clock speed in 45nm LP process. To provide optimum speed of the processor even at low voltage of 1.0V, a multi-Vdd / multi-frequency design methodology is used. The factors that make the Hummingbird an ideal processor core for use in advanced mobile devices are its low power consumption and high operating clock performance.

Bob Russo, Intrinsity CEO, stated “Not only is it the fastest available Cortex-A8 processor in an LP technology on the market, but we believe it has the lowest leakage and dynamic power consumption of any high-end mobile processor core out there. Mobile device end-users want smoother video, faster gaming, and a longer battery life. Meeting these conflicting demands typically means building a new processor implementation from scratch. That can take as long as two or more years and hundreds of engineers — a very expensive proposition. Intrinsity’s FastCore solution could be available in as quickly as four months at a fraction of the cost. Cycle behavior changes are not viable because they require that all software and test suites be largely re-designed and introduce an unacceptable high level of risk. Add another year or more to the development time for that. Intrinsity has solved this problem by applying a semi-custom design flow and Fast14 technology to enhance a great core and potentially double its performance.”

A highly effective synthesis flow which produces static logic with optimal timing and power was utilized to create the gate-level view of the Hummingbird. With this flow, standard cell gates are placed to diminish wire delay and maximize speed. The Cortex-A8 processor-based FastCore embedded core is cycle-accurate and Boolean equivalent to the original Cortex-A8 RTL specification.

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