New MIPS32® 74Kâ„¢ Family Delivers Industry-Leading Performance with Advanced Microarchitecture, Enhanced DSP Capabilities
MICROPROCESSOR FORUM, SAN JOSE, Calif., — May 22, 2007 – Leveraging more than two decades of market and technology leadership, MIPS Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: MIPS) today unveiled its next-generation processor core family based on an innovative embedded microarchitecture. The MIPS32® 74Kâ„¢ cores are the industry’s first fully synthesizable 32-bit processors to achieve operating frequencies greater than 1 GHz in TSMC 65nm process technology. Long-time MIPS licensee Broadcom Corporation was the first to license the 74Kâ„¢ core in January as an early access customer—as the company continues to drive next-generation solutions for the business, consumer and service provider markets.
The MIPS-Verified™ 74K cores are uniquely designed for high-volume applications throughout the digital and connected home, including DTV, set-top boxes, next-generation DVD players/recorders, broadband access, PON, residential gateways and VoIP – all markets where MIPS holds a commanding position. The 74K™ core family is designed to work with generic standard cells, memories and EDA design flows without the need for premium physical IP or costly structured logic and custom design flows. The processor family is optimized to deliver exceptional performance levels as well as area- and power-efficiencies required for today’s complex SoC designs.
"The 74K core family introduces advanced microarchitecture techniques that have never before been available in a synthesizable core —delivering a new level of performance for a licensable design," noted Linley Gwennap, principal analyst of The Linley Group. "Yet MIPS has been able to deliver this strong performance while optimizing area and cost, giving SoC designers an efficient option for meeting next-generation performance requirements."
“The rapid convergence of digital devices and the emergence of new consumer markets, including IPTV, HD DVD, Blu-rayâ„¢ Disc and 802.11n, are driving the demand for superior performance, lower system costs and low power consumption,†said Jack Browne, vice president of marketing at MIPS Technologies. “The 74K core family delivers superior performance and power-efficiencies in the smallest area in its class, enabling our customers to dramatically shorten their design cycles and bring a new generation of powerful MIPS-Based products into the market.â€
Innovative Microarchitecture: Optimized for Enhanced Performance
MIPS Technologies has optimized the 74K processor cores for breakthrough performance and area- and power-efficiencies by designing an advanced microarchitecture for the embedded market. This revolutionary core technology is compatible with the software and system interfaces of the industry-standard 24K®, 24KEâ„¢ and 34Kâ„¢ processors, enabling SoC designers to take advantage of their existing hardware infrastructure.
Advanced Pipeline Design Maximizes Frequency, Architecture Performance
Compared to traditional approaches, the 74K core’s 17-stage pipeline employing a unique combination of out-of-order dispatch and asymmetric dual-issue, enables a higher frequency, higher performance solution, with lower area and power. Out-of-order instruction dispatch enables the 74K core to execute multiple instructions more often than an in-order processor—resulting in significantly improved performance and efficiency, even for existing binary code. The ability to efficiently execute existing binaries, combined with the use of the same system interface from previous MIPS’ processor cores, allows the 74K core family to offer a seamless upgrade.
Enhanced DSP Features Help Accelerate Performance
The 74K cores also feature enhanced DSP instructions that accelerate performance, reduce power consumption and add more signal processing functionality into the processor. Additional DSP instructions in Revision 2 of the MIPS® DSP ASE eliminate the need for a separate DSP core for many audio, video and VoIP applications, reducing silicon area, system costs and design cycles.
The combination of higher frequency, dual-issue capability and enhanced DSP instructions in the 74K core results in a speedup of more than 60% over the 24KE cores for a wide variety of DSP inner loops.
74K Core Feature Highlights:
The MIPS32 74K Core Family
The 74K core family includes two members: the 74Kcâ„¢ base integer core and the 74Kfâ„¢ core, which adds high-performance floating point support that is fully compliant with the IEEE 754 specification. Both 74K cores feature the CorExtendâ„¢ functionality, allowing SoC designers to add their own proprietary instructions and tightly coupled hardware. For additional product information, please visit www. http://www.mips.com/products/cores/32-bit_cores/MIPS32_74K_Family.php.
MIPS32 74Kc Core Product Specifications1 (Speed-Optimized)
| Speed (worst case) | 1. 04 GHz |
| Core Area (mm2) | 1.7 |
| Total Area (mm2) | 2.5 |
| Performance | 1.8 DMIPS/MHz |
| Power | 0.76 mW/MHz |
| Process | TSMC 65 nm GP |
| Cache Size (inst/data) | 32K/32K |
*Frequency, power consumption and size depend upon configuration options, synthesis, silicon vendor, process, and cell libraries
Availability and MIPS® Ecosystem
The 74K core family is now generally available to customers. Similar to all MIPS product families, the 74K cores will be supported by a robust and extensive ecosystem of silicon IP, software, hardware solutions and services.