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A New Direction For Computer Architecture Research

A New Direction for Computer Architecture Research
Abstract
In this paper we suggest a different computing environment as a worthy new direction for computer architecture research: personal mobile computing, where portable devices are used for visual computing and personal communications tasks. Such a device supports in an integrated fashion all the functions provided today by a portable computer, a cellular phone, a digital camera and a video game. The requirements placed on the processor in this environment are energy efficiency, high performance for multimedia and DSP functions, and area efficient, scalable designs.
We examine the architectures that were recently proposed for billion transistor microprocessors. While they are very promising for the stationary desktop and server workloads, we discover that most of them are unable to meet the challenges of the new environment and provide the necessary enhancements for multimedia applications running on portable devices.
We conclude with Vector IRAM, an initial example of a microprocessor architecture and implementation that matches the new environment.
1 Introduction
Advances in integrated circuits technology will soon provide the capability to integrate one billion transistors in a single chip [1]. This exciting opportunity presents computer architects and designers with the challenging problem of proposing microprocessor organizations able to utilize this huge transistor budget efficiently and meet the requirements of future applications. To address this challenge, IEEE Computer magazine hosted a special issue on ``Billion Transistor Architectures'' [2] in September 1997. The first three articles of the issue discussed problems and trends that will affect future processor design, while seven articles from academic research groups proposed microprocessor architectures and implementations for billion transistor chips. These proposals covered a wide architecture space, ranging from out-of-order designs to...