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CPU design is the design engineering task of producing a CPU, a component of computer hardware. It is a subfield of electronics engineering and computer engineering. more...
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Overview
CPU design focuses on these areas:
datapaths (such as ALUs and pipelines);
control unit: logic which controls the datapaths;
Memory components such as register files, caches;
Clock circuitry such as clock drivers, PLLs, clock distribution networks;
Pad transceiver circuitry;
Logic gate cell library which is used to implement the logic;
CPUs designed for high performance markets might require custom designs for each of these items to achieve frequency, power-dissipation, and chip-area goals.
CPUs designed for lower performance markets might lessen the implementation burden by:
acquiring some of these items by purchasing them as intellectual property;
use control logic implementation techniques (logic synthesis using CAD tools) to implement the other components - datapaths, register files, clocks;
Common logic styles used in CPU design include:
unstructured random logic;
finite state machines;
microprogramming (common from 1965 to 1985, no longer common except for CISC CPUs);
programmable logic array (common in the 1980s, no longer common);
Device types used to implement the logic include:
Transistor-transistor logic Small Scale Integration jelly-bean logic chips - no longer used for CPUs;
Programmable Array Logic and Programmable logic devices - no longer used for CPUs;
Emitter Coupled Logic gate arrays - no longer common;
CMOS gate arrays - no longer used for CPUs;
CMOS ASICs - what's commonly used today, they're so common that the term ASIC is not used for CPUs;
Field Programmable Gate Arrays - common for soft microprocessors, and more or less required for reconfigurable computing;
A CPU design project generally has these major tasks:
programmer-visible instruction set architecture, which can be implemented by a variety of microarchitectures;
architectural study and performance modeling;
RTL (eg. logic) design and verification;
circuit design of speed critical components (caches, registers, ALUs);
logic synthesis or logic-gate-level design;
timing analysis to confirm that all logic and circuits will run at the specified operating frequency;
physical design including floorplanning, place and route of logic gates;
checking that RTL, gate-level, transistor-level and physical-level representatations are equivalent;
checks for signal integrity, chip manufacturability;
As with most complex electronic designs, the logic verification effort (proving that the design does not have bugs) now dominates the project schedule of a CPU.
Key CPU architectural innovations include cache, virtual memory, instruction pipelining, superscalar, CISC, RISC, virtual machine, emulators, microprogram, and stack.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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