Simultaneous thin-thread processors for low-power embedded systems

Abstract

The traditional pipelined RISC processors have been the mainstream technology in high-end embedded systems; it is due to that embedded applications are often satisfied with minimum performance requirement. However, the upcoming application domain of embedded systems will require more advanced microprocessor cores due to the future computing demands. Therefore, the system would eventually have to turn to advanced processors such as superscalars for the embedded processing cores. A drawback is that the conventional design of the superscalar processors possesses inherent complexity and power problems which are not easily acceptable in the domain of embedded processors. In this paper, we investigate the possibility to use multi-threaded processors to solve the problems with the traditional superscalar processors in embedded systems.