龙芯2号同时多线程处理器的软硬件接口设计

随着生产工艺的提高,芯片上能集成越来越多的晶体管,多线程技术也逐步成为一种主流的处理器体系结构技术,而多线程处理器的软硬件接口也就成为急需解决的问题.在分析同时多线程的软件需求的基础上,提出龙芯2号同时多线程处理器的软硬件接口协同设计解决方案,给出相应的操作系统实现方案.同时,在Linux 2.4.20的基础上实现了龙芯2号同时多线程处理器相应的操作系统.通过运行SPEC CPU2000等测试程序进行性能评测,充分说明实现软硬件接口的龙芯2号同时多线程处理器极大地提高了多进程负载的性能.分析和设计方案不仅适用于同时多线程处理器,而且对于片内多核处理器的设计也有借鉴作用.

Hardware/Software Interface Design of Godson-2 Simultaneous Multithreading Processor

With the development of VLSI (very large scale integrated circuit) technology, a single chip can contain over one billion transistor. Multithreading technique is the developing trend of high performance processor in the future. How to design hardware/software interface has become a major problem for multithreading processor. According to simultaneous multithreading processor requirement and the original Godson-2 architecture, the hardware/software interface for Godson-2 simultaneous multithreading processor is advanced and defined. Based on this interface, the corresponding Linux for Godson-2 SMT (simultaneous multithreading) processor is designed and implemented on Linux 2.4.20. The SPEC CPU2000 and some other benchmark programs are used to compare the performance of Godson-2 SMT processor with the superscalar processor. The results show that the Godson-2 SMT processor designed with the interface can get a much better performance. The hardware/software interface and operating system design in this paper are also very useful for the multi-core processor design.