PWRficient is a

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

series by P.A. Semi where the PA6T-1682M was the only one that became an actual product. PWRficient processors comply with the

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

Power ISA Power ISA is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) currently developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, led by IBM. It was originally developed by IBM and the now-defunct Power.org industry group. Power IS ...

, and are designed for high performance and extreme power efficiency. The processors are highly modular and can be combined to

multi-core A multi-core processor (MCP) is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit (IC) with two or more separate central processing units (CPUs), called ''cores'' to emphasize their multiplicity (for example, ''dual-core'' or ''quad-core''). Ea ...

system-on-a-chip A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with memory, input/output, and dat ...

(SoC) designs, combining

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

, northbridge, and southbridge functionality on a single processor die.

Details

The PA6T is the first and only processor core from P.A. Semi, in two distinct product lines: 16xxM dual core and 13xxM/E single core. The PA6T lines differed in

L2 cache A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, which ...

size,

memory controller A memory controller, also known as memory chip controller (MCC) or a memory controller unit (MCU), is a digital circuit that manages the flow of data going to and from a computer's main memory. When a memory controller is integrated into anothe ...

s, communication functionality, and cryptography offloading features. P.A. Semi planned up to 16 cores. The PA6T is the first Power ISA core designed from scratch in the previous ten years outside the

AIM alliance The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc., Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Its goal was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the IBM POWER architecture, POWE ...

, which included

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

Freescale Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer. It was created by the divestiture of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola in 2004. Freescale focused their integrated circuit products on the automotive, embedde ...

, and

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

Since

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

was an investors in P.A. Semi, it was suggested that its fabrication plants would have manufactured the PWRficient processors. PWRficient processors were initially shipped to select customers in February 2007 and were released worldwide in Q4 2007. P.A. Semi was bought by

in April 2008, and closed development of PWRficient architecture processors. However, it will continue to manufacture, sell, and support these components for the foreseeable future due to an agreement with the

US Government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, execut ...

for some military applications. Some components of the P.A. Semi PWRficient were later integrated into

Apple silicon Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture family, ARM architecture. They are used in nearly all of the company's devices including Mac ...

Implementation

PWRficient processors comprise three parts:

CPU

PA6T *

Superscalar A superscalar processor (or multiple-issue processor) is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single in ...

, out-of-order

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

processor core *Adheres to the Power ISA v.2.04 * Little endian or big endian operation *64/64 kB instruction and data L1 caches. 32 GB/s bandwidth. *Six

execution unit In computer engineering, an execution unit (E-unit or EU) is a part of a processing unit that performs the operations and calculations forwarded from the instruction unit. It may have its own internal control sequence unit (not to be confused w ...

s including a

double precision Double-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP64 or float64) is a floating-point arithmetic, floating-point computer number format, number format, usually occupying 64 Bit, bits in computer memory; it represents a wide range of numeri ...

FPU and AltiVec unit *

Hypervisor A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM) or virtualizer, is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...

and

virtualization In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s wit ...

support *Maximum 7 W at 2 GHz *11 million transistors, 10 mm² large @ 65 nm.

Memory system

CONEXIUM * scalable cross-bar interconnect * 1–8 SMP cores * 1–2

s, 512 KB – 8 MB large. 16 GB/s bandwidth. * 1–4 1067 MHz DDR2

s. 16 GB/s bandwidth. * 64 GB/s peak bandwidth *

MOESI In Roman literature of the early 1st century CE, the Moesi ( or ; , ''Moisoí'' or Μυσοί, ''Mysoí''; or ''Moesae'') appear as a Paleo-Balkan people who lived in the region around the Timok River to the south of the Danube. The Moesi do ...

coherency

I/O

ENVOI * Centralized DMA engine, 32 GB/s bandwidth * 16–64

SerDes A Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) is a pair of functional blocks commonly used in high speed communications to compensate for limited input/output. These blocks convert data between serial data and parallel interfaces in each direction. The ter ...

lanes *

XAUI 10 Gigabit Attachment Unit Interface (XAUI ) is a standard for extending the XGMII (10 Gigabit Media Independent Interface) between the MAC and PHY layer of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) defined in Clause 47 of the IEEE 802.3 standard. The name ...

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as Peripher ...

* SGMII * Offload engine for

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

RAID RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...

, TCP

Users

Curtiss-Wright The Curtiss-Wright Corporation is an American manufacturer and services provider headquartered in Davidson, North Carolina, with factories and operations in and outside the United States. Created in 1929 from the consolidation (business), consoli ...

planned the 1682M processor for its

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, Scalar potential, potential fields, Seismic tomograph ...

systems. *

Mercury Computer Systems Mercury Systems, Inc. is a technology company serving the aerospace and defense industry. It designs, develops and manufactures open architecture computer hardware and software products, including secure embedded processing modules and subsystem ...

planned the 1682M processor for its

signal A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology. In ...

and

image processing An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be displayed through other media, including a pr ...

systems. *

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered at the NEC Supertower in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It provides IT and network solutions, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), Inte ...

planned the 1682M processor for its

storage array A disk array is a disk storage system which contains multiple disk drives. It is differentiated from a disk enclosure, in that an array has cache memory and advanced functionality, like RAID, deduplication, encryption and virtualization. Compone ...

systems. * AmigaOne X1000 has the 1682M processor as CPU.

References

External links

*
PA Semi attacks performance/WattFPF 2005: P.A. Semi's PA6T-1682M System on a Chip – Real World TechnologiesJudicious Clocking Subdues Power-Architecture Cooling Needs – Electronic Design
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pwrficient Power microprocessors