Onze Russische vrienden van iXBT Hardware brengen ons een preview van Transmeta's VLIW processor, de Crusoe. Hieronder wat meer technische info over de werking van deze CPU:
To begin with, we should say a few words about the processor's logical structure. Crusoe core consists of 5 modules of four different types: 2 integer units, 1 floating point unit, 1 memory transfer unit and 1 branch unit. So, every VLIW instruction, called a molecule, can be 64 bits or 128 bits long and contain up to four RISC-like instructions, called atoms. All atoms within a molecule are executed in parallel, each by a separate module. Molecules are executed in order, one by one, unlike most today's superscalar x86 processors with complex out-of-order hardware. This greatly simplifies the processor interior allowing to give up some complicated functional modules (such as a decoder of numerous x86 instructions). Just try to compare the die size of the mobile 0.18 micron Coppermine with the total cache of 288KB and the die size of TM5400 with the total cache of 384KB: it will be 106 sq.mm against 73. These results directly tell on the level of heat dissipation as well as on the power consumption.
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