VLIW PROCESSORS

Department of E &TC, MITCOE, Pu

Introduction
o Very long instruction word or VLIW refers to a
processor architecture designed to take advantage of
instruction level parallelism
o Instruction of a VLIW processor consists of multiple
independent operations grouped together.
o There are Multiple Independent Functional Units in
VLIW processor architecture.
o Each operation in the instruction is aligned to a
functional unit.
o All functional units share the use of a common large
register file.
o This type of processor architecture is intended to allow
higher performance without the inherent complexity of
Different Approaches
Other approaches to improving performance in processor architectures
:
o Pipelining
Breaking up instructions into sub-steps so that instructions can be
executed partially at the same time

o Superscalar architectures
Dispatching individual instructions to be executed completely
independently in different parts of the processor

o Out-of-order execution
Executing instructions in an order different from the program
Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP )
o Instruction-level parallelism (ILP) is a measure of how
many of the operations in a computer program can be
performed simultaneously.

o The overlap among instructions is called instruction level

parallelism.

o Ordinary programs are typically written under a sequential

execution model where instructions execute one after the
other and in the order specified by the programmer.

o Goal of compiler and processor designers implementing ILP

is to identify and take advantage of as much ILP as possible.
 What is ILP? (Example)
Consider the following program:
op 1 e = a + b
op2 f = c + d
op3 m = e * f

o Operation 3 depends on the results of operations 1 and 2, so

it cannot be calculated until both of them are completed
o However, operations 1 and 2 do not depend on any other
operation, so they can be calculated simultaneously
o If we assume that each operation can be completed in one
unit of time then these three instructions can be completed
in a total of two units of time
o giving an ILP of 3/2.
VLIW Compiler
o Compiler is responsible for static scheduling of instructions in
VLIW processor.

o Compiler finds out which operations can be executed in parallel

in the program.

o It groups together these operations in single instruction which is

the very large instruction word.

o Compiler ensures that an operation is not issued before its

operands are ready.
VLIW Instruction
o One VLIW instruction word encodes multiple operations which
allows them to be initiated in a single clock cycle.

o The operands and the operation to be performed by the various

functional units are specified in the instruction itself.

o One instruction encodes at least one operation for each execution

unit of the device.

o So length of the instruction increases with the number of execution

units

o To accommodate these operation fields, VLIW instructions are

usually at least 64 bits wide, and on some architectures are much
wider up to 1024 bits.
VLIW Instruction

Add r1,r2,r3; Sub r4,r5,r6; Ld r7,data; St r8,data

REGESTER FILES

LOAD LOAD
ALU ALU
/STORE /STORE
ILP in VLIW
o Consider the computation of y = a1x1 + a2x2 + a3x3
On a sequential processor On the VLIW processor with
2 load/store units, 1 multiply unit
and 1 add unit
cycle 1: load a1 cycle 1: load a1
cycle 2: load x1 load x1
cycle 3: load a2 cycle 2: load a2
cycle 4: load x2 load x2
cycle 5: multiply z1 a1 x1 Multiply z1 a1 x1
cycle 6: multiply z2 a2 x2 cycle 3: load a3
cycle 7: add y z1 z2 load x3
cycle 8: load a3 Multiply z2 a2 x2
cycle 9: load x3 cycle 4: multiply z3 a3 x3
cycle 10: multiply z1 a3 x3 add y z1 z2
cycle 11: add y y z2 cycle 5: add y y z3

requires 11 cycles. requires 5 cycles.

Block Diagram
Diagram (Conceptual Instruction
Execution)
Working
o Long instruction words are fetched from the memory
o A common multi-ported register file for fetching the operands
and storing the results.
o Parallel random access to the register file is possible through
the read/write cross bar.
o Execution in the functional units is carried out concurrently
with the load/store operation of data between RAM and the
register file.
o One or multiple register files for FX and FP data.
o Rely on compiler to find parallelism and schedule dependency
free program code.
Difference Between VLIW &
Superscalar Architecture
VLIW vs. Superscalar
Architecture
o Instruction formulation
 Superscalar:
⁻ Receive conventional instructions conceived for sequential
processors.

 VLIW:
⁻ Receive long instruction words, each comprising a field (or
opcode) for each execution unit.
⁻ Instruction word length depends number of execution units and
code length to control each unit (such as opcode length,
registers).
⁻ Typical word length is 64 – 1024 bits, much longer than
conventional machine word length.
 VLIW vs. Superscalar
Architecture
o Instruction scheduling

 Superscalar:
⁻ Done dynamically at run-time by the hardware.
⁻ Data dependency is checked and resolved in
hardware.
⁻ Need a look ahead hardware window for instruction
fetch.

 VLIW:
⁻ Done statically at compile time by compiler.
⁻ Data dependency is checked by compiler.
⁻ In case of un-filled opcodes in a VLIW, memory
space and instruction bandwidth are wasted.
Comparison: CISC, RISC,
VLIW
ARCHITECTURE CISC RISC VLIW
CHARACTERIST
C
Instruction Size Varies One size, usually 32 bits One size

Instruction Varies from simple to Almost always one Many simple,

Semantics complex; possibly simple independent
many operation operations
dependent operations
per instruction
Registers Few, sometimes Many, general-purpose Many, general-
special purpose
Hardware Design Exploit microcode Exploit implementations Exploit
implementations with one pipeline and & implementations with
no microcode multiple pipelines, no
microcode &
no complex dispatch
logic
Advantages of VLIW
o Dependencies are determined by compiler and used to
schedule according to function unit latencies .
o Function units are assigned by compiler and correspond
to the position within the instruction packet.
o Reduces hardware complexity.
• Tasks such as decoding, data dependency detection,
instruction issues etc. becoming simple.
• Ensures potentially higher Clock Rate.
• Ensures Low power consumption
Disadvantages of VLIW
o Higher complexity of the compiler
o Compatibility across implementations : Compiler optimization
needs to consider technology dependent parameters such as
latencies and load-use time of cache.
o Unscheduled events (e.g. cache miss) stall entire processor .
o Code density: In case of un-filled opcodes in a VLIW, memory
space and instruction bandwidth are wasted i.e. low slot utilization.
o Code expansion: Causes high power consumption
Applications
o VLIW architecture is suitable for Digital Signal Processing
applications.
o Processing of media data like compression/decompression
of Image and speech data.
Examples of VLIW processor
o VLIW Mini supercomputers:
Multiflow TRACE 7/300, 14/300, 28/300
Multiflow TRACE /500
Cydrome Cydra 5
IBM Yorktown VLIW Computer
o Single-Chip VLIW Processors:
Intel iWarp, Philip’s LIFE Chips
o Single-Chip VLIW Media (through-put) Processors:
Trimedia, Chromatic, Micro-Unity
o DSP Processors (TI TMS320C6x )