This paper presents some of the enhancements to the TriMedia instruction set architecture (ISA), as supported by the TM3270 media-processor. We show how the new operations are used to optimize the individual MPEG2 encoder kernels. Furthermore, we quantify the contribution of these kernels to overall MPEG2 encoder performance. We introduce two-slot operations, collapsed load operations with interpolations, and new multiplication operations. The encoder's texture pipeline for a bi-directionally predicted 8/spl times/8 block is performed in 358 VLIW instructions. MPEG2 encoding at CIF resolution at 25 frames per second is achieved within 33.5 MHz of processor performance.

This paper describes the (micro-) architecture of the TM3270 data cache. We present the cache parameters, such as cache size, associativity, line size and cache policies. We describe the data cache pipeline partitioning and the cache memory structure organization. We introduce "collapsed" and "two-slot" load operations. Furthermore, we introduce a combined software/hardware based technique for prefetching of data into the cache. We use an MPEG2 encoder application for a quantative evaluation of architectural aspects such as data prefetching and show that MPEG2 encoding at 352*288 resolution (CIF) at 25 frames per second can be performed in 33.3 MHz.

We present the TM3270 media-processor, the latest TriMedia VLIW processor, tuned to address the performance demands of standard definition video processing, combined with embedded processor requirements for the consumer market. We discuss the architecture, implementation, and its first realization in a 90 nm process technology. The processor incorporates instruction set architectural (ISA) extensions and a load/store unit optimized for the video-processing domain. The ISA extensions improve the performance on video processing kernels. The data cache policies and prefetching techniques allow for efficient access to multimedia data. Finally, power consumption and performance data are presented

The architecture of the TriMedia CPU64 is based on the TM1000 DSPCPU. The original VLIW architecture has been extended with the concepts of vector processing and superoperations. The new vector operations and superoperations need to be supported by the compiler and simulator to make them accessible to application programmers. It was our intention to support these new features while remaining compliant with the ANSI C standard. This paper describes the mechanisms which were implemented to achieve this goal. Furthermore, the optimization of applications needs to address the vectorization of the functions to be implemented. Some general guidelines for producing efficient vectorized code are given.