SW/HW Co-Design Of AltiVec Coprocessor

In order to improve the overall processing capability of embedded systems for multimedia applications,modern processor design companies and manufacturers generally will add an extra set of coprocessor instructions dedicated to multimedia processing in addition to its original basic instruction set.In most cases,this set of instructions is based on the SIMD(single instruction multiple data)technology.AltiVec technology is originally proposed by IBM and Motorola to act as a SIMD vector extension to the PowerPC instruction set,aiming at enhancing the parallel-processing capacity for PowerPC family processors in multimedia data processing.Hardware and software co-design refers to the parallel design of software and hardware.This approach allows software designers to get the instruction algorithm model that the hardware is to implement before the completion of hardware development and conduct the software modeling and implementation according to that algorithm.For a co-processor,its SW/HW co-design flow consists of the following parts: the analysis of the function and format of instruction set,task assignment of software and hardware,co-design and co-verification of software and hardware.This thesis has conducted the SW/HW co-design and co-verification of an AltiVec coprocessor.Firstly,the article introduces the AltiVec instruction set architecture and its function and format,and then describes several HW/SW co-design and co-verification flows based on AltiVec technology,namely the co-verification based on the System Verilog platform,the verification of the PowerPC405+AltiVec from the top level,and the co-design on QEMU ESL platform.After that,this thesis provides the framework of the hardware implementation of AltiVec coprocessor and one of its fuctional unit according to the analysis of the function and format of the instructions.The experiments are conducted based on what is mentioned above.Finally,an IDCT program based on AltiVec technology is runned on QEMU,and the influence of the efficiency of the program after using AltiVec instructions is assessed.At the same time,the program is runned on the hardware implementation of PowerPC405+Alti Vec,and the problems are summarized and explained.