A 98 GMACs/W 32-core vector processor in 65 nm CMOS

This paper presents a high-performance dual-issue 32-core SIMD platform for image and video processing. The SIMD cores support 8/16 bits SIMD MAC instructions, and vertical vector access. Eight cores with a 4-ports L2 cache are connected by CIB bus as a cluster. Four clusters are connected by mesh network. This hierarchical network can provide more than 192 GB/s low latency inter-core BWin average. The 4-ports L2 cache architecture is also designed to provide 192GB/s L2 cache BW. To reduce coherence operation in large-scale SMP, an application specified protocol is proposed. Compared with MOESI, 67.8% of L1 cache energy can be saved in 32 cores case. The whole system including 32 vector cores, 256KB L2 cache, 64-bit DDRII PHY and two PLL units, occupy 25mm ² in 65 nm CMOS. It can achieve a peak performance of 375 GMACs and 98 GMACs/W at 1.2V.