TriMedia is a family of

very long instruction word Very long instruction word (VLIW) refers to instruction set architectures that are designed to exploit instruction-level parallelism (ILP). A VLIW processor allows programs to explicitly specify instructions to execute in parallel, whereas conve ...

media processor A media processor, mostly used as an image/ video processor, is a microprocessor-based system-on-a-chip which is designed to deal with digital streaming data in real-time (e.g. display refresh) rates. These devices can also be considered a class ...

s from

NXP Semiconductors NXP Semiconductors N.V. is a Dutch semiconductor manufacturing and design company with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. It is the third largest European semiconductor company by market capitalization as of 2024. The company employs approx ...

(formerly

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

Semiconductors). TriMedia is a

Harvard architecture The Harvard architecture is a computer architecture with separate computer storage, storage and signal pathways for Machine code, instructions and data. It is often contrasted with the von Neumann architecture, where program instructions and d ...

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 ...

that features many DSP and

SIMD Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) is a type of parallel computer, parallel processing in Flynn's taxonomy. SIMD describes computers with multiple processing elements that perform the same operation on multiple data points simultaneousl ...

operations to efficiently process audio and video data streams. For TriMedia processor optimal performance can be achieved by only programming in C/ C++ as opposed to most other VLIW/DSP processors which require

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

programming to achieve optimal performance. High-level programmability of TriMedia relies on the large uniform

register file A register file is an array of processor registers in a central processing unit (CPU). The instruction set architecture of a CPU will almost always define a set of registers which are used to stage data between memory and the functional units on ...

and the

orthogonal instruction set In computer engineering, an orthogonal instruction set is an instruction set architecture where all instruction types can use all addressing modes. It is "Orthogonality, orthogonal" in the sense that the instruction type and the addressing mode ma ...

, in which RISC-like operations can be scheduled independently of each other in the VLIW issue slots. Furthermore, TriMedia processors boast advanced

cache Cache, caching, or caché may refer to: Science and technology * Cache (computing), a technique used in computer storage for easier data access * Cache (biology) or hoarding, a food storing behavior of animals * Cache (archaeology), artifacts p ...

s supporting unaligned accesses without performance penalty, hardware and software data/

instruction prefetch Instruction or instructions may refer to: A specific direction or order given to someone to perform a task or carry out a procedure. They provide clear guidance on how to achieve a desired outcome. They can be written or verbal, and they typically ...

, allocate-on-write-miss, as well as collapsed load operations combining a traditional load with a 2-taps filter function. TriMedia development has been supported by various research studies on hardware

cache coherency In computer architecture, cache coherence is the uniformity of shared resource data that is stored in multiple local caches. In a cache coherent system, if multiple clients have a cached copy of the same region of a shared memory resource, all ...

, multithreading and diverse accelerators to build scalable shared memory

multiprocessor Multiprocessing (MP) is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. The ...

systems.

Features

* 5 to 8 issue slots filled with up to 45 functional units * 128 32-bit

general purpose registers A processor register is a quickly accessible location available to a computer's processor. Registers usually consist of a small amount of fast storage, although some registers have specific hardware functions, and may be read-only or write-onl ...

* SIMD & DSP operations * 32-bit

IEEE 754 The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754) is a technical standard for floating-point arithmetic originally established in 1985 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The standard #Design rationale, add ...

floating point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some base) multiplied by an integer power of that base. Numbers of this form ...

operations * 8/16/32/64 KB Instruction cache, 8/16/32/64/128 KB Data cache * separate memory and

peripheral A peripheral device, or simply peripheral, is an auxiliary hardware device that a computer uses to transfer information externally. A peripheral is a hardware component that is accessible to and controlled by a computer but is not a core compo ...

bus interfaces * up to 8 built-in timers * up to 64 built-in vectored

interrupt In digital computers, an interrupt (sometimes referred to as a trap) is a request for the processor to ''interrupt'' currently executing code (when permitted), so that the event can be processed in a timely manner. If the request is accepted ...

s * supported by an

ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...

compliant C/ C++

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

toolchain A toolchain is a set of software development tools used to build and otherwise develop software. Often, the tools are executed sequentially and form a pipeline such that the output of one tool is the input for the next. Sometimes the term is us ...

History

The first TriMedia was created in 1987 under the name LIFE-1 VLIW processor by Gerrit Slavenburg and Junien Labrousse. For the next several years LIFE was further matured internally in

under guidance of Gerrit Slavenburg, which resulted in 1996 in the introduction of the first Trimedia product: the TM1000 PCI Media Processor (introduced as TM-1 ). In 1998 the TM1100 and TM1300 (later renamed to PNX1300) products were introduced. In 2000, Philips spun out its TriMedia business to TriMedia Technologies Inc. (TTI) which was a pure “IP vendor”. TTI tried unsuccessfully to create a 64 bit next generation TriMedia CPU architecture. This venture was ill-timed, as it was right at the start of the Dot-com recession. In 2003 what was left of TTI was re-absorbed within Philips. In 2002, the TM3260 CPU was released in the PNX1500 Media Processor

SoC SOC, SoC, Soc, may refer to: Science and technology * Information security operations center, in an organization, a centralized unit that deals with computer security issues * Selectable output control * Separation of concerns, a program design pr ...

. This CPU was the first of a family of modular Trimedia CPU cores with standardized interfaces that can easily be integrated inside Audio/Video SoC's. The TM3260 has found use in other NXP products, e.g. the PNX8550 Home Entertainment Engine. In 2004 the super pipelined TM5250 CPU core was announced and won the ''Best Media Processor of 2003 '' award from ''

Microprocessor Report ''Microprocessor Report'' is a newsletter covering the microprocessor industry. The publication is accessible only to paying subscribers. To avoid bias, it does not take advertisements. The publication provides extensive analysis of new high-perf ...

''. This processor was made available in the PNX1700 Media Processor SoC. These two CPU cores were designed by Jan-Willem van de Waerdt in close cooperation with Gerrit Slavenburg. In 2005, the TM3270 was announced as a low-power

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and d ...

capable incarnation of the TriMedia architecture (see external links to papers below), first released in the PNX4103 SoC. In 2006, Philips Semiconductors as a whole was spun off from Philips and was renamed to NXP. In 2009, the PNX1005 became available, using the latest TM3282 CPU core. This CPU is the first TriMedia to have 8 issue slots. It also adds more operations for H.264 and video optimization, data-cache pre-allocating and a bit-stream coprocessor for entropy en/de-coding. It is also the first TriMedia to have a real-time trace block. In 2010, the TriMedia group at NXP was terminated.

Cores

Products

The TriMedia cores were typically used in home, mobile and automotive products (see as an example Philips'

Streamium Streamium was a line of IP-enabled entertainment products by Dutch electronics multi-national Philips Consumer Electronics. Streamium products use Wi-Fi to Streaming media, stream multimedia content from desktop computers or Internet-based services ...

networked multi-media products). They are used as deeply embedded CPUs in SoCs as well as general purpose DSPs. Some SoCs even have multiple TriMedia cores such as the PNX5100 that contains three TM3271 cores.Product brief: NXP video back-end processor PNX5100
With the growing complexity of SoC platforms, in subsequent years, the basic TriMedia CPU cores were also included in more highly integrated media processor SoC products, but these were launched under the

Nexperia Nexperia is a semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. It is a subsidiary of Wingtech Technology, a Shanghai-listed company partially owned by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of th ...

brand.

References

EEMBC EEMBC, the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, is a non-profit, member-funded organization formed in 1997, focused on the creation of standard benchmarks for the hardware and software used in embedded systems. The goal of its members is ...

, the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, is a non-profit corporation
Press release for TM3282 EEMBC benchmark scores

{{NXP Semiconductors Digital signal processors NXP Semiconductors Very long instruction word computing

Features

History

Cores

Products

See also

References

External links