A 600 MHz superscalar RISC microprocessor with out-of-order execution

Abstract

A six-issue, four-fetch, out-of-order execution, 6OOMHz Alpha microprocessor achieves an estimated 40SpecInt95, 60SpecFP95 and 1800MB/s on McCalpin Stream. The 16.7x18.8mm2 die contains 15.2M transistors and dissipates an estimated 72W. It is in 2.0V, 6-metal, 0.35/spl mu/m CMOS with CMP planarization. The chip is in a 587-pin ceramic IPGA with 198 pins for VDD/VSS that includes a CuW heat slug for low thermal resistance between die and detachable heat sink. An on-chip PLL performs frequency multiplication of a differential PECL reference and synchronizes I/O by phase-aligning a CPU clock to the reference.