An optimized superscalar instruction issue architecture using the instruction buffer

명령어 버퍼를 이용한 최적화된 수퍼스칼라 명령어 이슈 구조

Processors using the superscalar rchitecture can achieve high performance by executing multipel instructions in a clock cycle. It is made possible by having multiple functional units and issuing multiple instructions to functional units simultaneously. But instructions can be dependent on one another and these dependencies prevent some instructions form being issued at the same cycle. In this paper, we designed an issue unit of a superscalar RISC microprocessor that can issue four instructions per cycle. The issue unit receives instructions form a prefetch unit, and issues them in order at a rate of as high as four instructions in one cycle for maximum utilization of functional units. By using an instruction buffer, the unit decouples instruction fetch and issue to improve instruction ussue rate. The issue unit is composed of an instruction buffer and an instruction decoder. The instruction buffer aligns and stores instructions from the prefetch unit, and sends the earliest four available isstructions to the instruction decoder. The instruction decoder decodes instructions, and issues them if they are free form data dependencies and necessary functional units and rgister file prots are available. The issue unit is described with behavioral level HDL (lhardware description language). The result of simulation using C programs shows that instruction issue rate is improved as the instruction buffer size increases, and 12-entry instruction buffer is found to be optimum considering performance and hardware cost of the instruction buffer.