Configurable processor scores best in office test, Tensilica says

Although a so-called "out-of-the-box" Xtensa LX scored lower at 0.98880 for the OAmark than an out-of-the-box PowerPC 440GX processor, which recorded 1.07999, when the Xtensa LX was optimized its performance score was more than quadrupled to 4.19523, 3.88 times the performance of the PowerPC 440GX, Tensilica said.

In addition an "out-of-the-box" 64-bit MIPS 20Kc processor scored 0.89033 and an out-of-the-box ARM 1026EJ-S processor scored 0.75975, Tensilica said, adding that the EEMBC benchmark scores are independently certified by the EEMBC Certification Laboratories (ECL).

The EEMBC scores for licensable synthesizable processors are expressed on a "per-megahertz" basis, and the configuration of Xtensa LX used in this Office Automation benchmark certification achieved a 454-MHz operating frequency in a 90-nanometer ASIC technology, Tensilica said.

The 4.19523 OAmarks-per-megahertz at 454-MHz yield an "at-speed" score of 1904 OAmarks, which surpasses the previous highest absolute score posted by a 1.4-GHz Freescale PowerPC, the MPC7447A, Tensilica observed.

Tensilica's Xtensa LX processor also demonstrated smaller code size than the same competitor processors.

"For our 1.4 square millimeter Xtensa LX processor to have the equivalent speed of a much larger PowerPC core when running the out-of-the-box C code, while having a 4X code size advantage, is a testament to the inherent advantages of the Xtensa base processor architecture," stated Steve Roddy, vice president of marketing for Tensilica, in a statement.

Tensilica used the EEMBC-provided, ECL-certified C Code with its XPRES Compiler to generate the optimized version of the Xtensa LX processor for this benchmark. ANSI-standard C code tuning was performed to expose the natural parallelism inherent in the EEMBC benchmark code. No C intrinsics, no assembly coding, or other Xtensa-specific changes were made to the reference EEMBC C code. The resulting C code could be run on any processor, not just an Xtensa LX processor, the company said in the statement.