[libre-riscv-dev] [Bug 376] Assess 40/45 nm 2022 target and interfaces

[bugzilla-daemon at libre-soc.org]

https://bugs.libre-soc.org/show_bug.cgi?id=376

--- Comment #21 from Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net> ---
(In reply to Jacob Lifshay from comment #19)
> (In reply to Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton from comment #17)
> > (In reply to Jacob Lifshay from comment #12)
> > > Assuming we're building a higher than 2W version, I think we should double
> > > the int/fpmul to 8x32-bit per core or maybe even quadruple it to 16x32-bit
> > > and add more cores to 8 or 16 or more cores.
> > 
> > at 2.0 ghz this would start to put out some serious numbers :)
> 
> I got 1TFLOP/s for 16 fma/clock/core with 16 cores, that's more than half
> the PS4's performance.

those are deeply impressive numbers :)  the cross-over post explains however
that the number of RSes - and the data cache line widths etc. - are starting
to get rather scary.

48 LD/ST Reservation Stations would mean 96 160-bit PortInterfaces,
which is 15,360 wires coming into a single block!

we would be much better off going to 128-bit SIMD, which would have the
unfortunate side-effect of cutting scalar performance by another factor
of 2 in speed if there were register usage that could not be scheduled
correctly.


> > > Also, it might be worthwhile to add one more
> > > core and disable one at manufacture time as a way to increase yield.
> > 
> > that's a good idea.  have to bear in mind that current leakage occurs
> > regardless of whether the silicon is in use or not.
> 
> If we set up each core as a different power domain (which will also help
> with idle power), the disabled core could be powered-down.

(you still get current leakage even when powered down, is my point)


> We should probably also widen the instruction decoders to decode 3 or 4
> 32-bit instructions per cycle.

yes.  this will almost certainly be necessary, because we would have far more
instructions to keep the monstrous number of RSes "fed".

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.