Optimized ASIP Synthesis from Architecture Description Language Models

For the first time advances in semiconductor manufacturing do not lead to a corresponding increase in performance. At 65 nm and below it is predicted that only a small portion of performance increase will be attributed to shrinking geometries while the lion share is due to innovative processor architectures. To substantiate this assertion it is instructive to look at major drivers of the semiconductor industry: wireless communications and multimedia. Both areas are characterized by an exponentially increasing demand of computational power, which cannot be provided in an energy-efficient manner by traditional processor architectures. Today’s applications in wireless communications and multimedia require highly specialized and optimized architectures.