SAMP: a general purpose processor based on a self-timed VLIW structure

Abstract

A high-performance, general purpose processor has been designed, using various technology independent methods to improve performance. Its structure offers a large degree of parallelism and is adjusted to the application. A novel control unit, which asynchronously controls instruction execution by tokens, allows the evaluation of very complex expressions without any reference to clock cycles. The main memory communicates via 4 ports with the processor and avoids a bottleneck in accessing data. The processor performance is measured and compared with several commercial systems.