From 398661b68e53b187394e596ae1e1c4be49542d79 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2018 02:57:52 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] add load/store analysis --- simple_v_extension.mdwn | 20 ++++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/simple_v_extension.mdwn b/simple_v_extension.mdwn index 70d994584..6ef54422d 100644 --- a/simple_v_extension.mdwn +++ b/simple_v_extension.mdwn @@ -79,14 +79,16 @@ P and V to make use of Compressed Instructions as a result. # Analysis and discussion of Vector vs SIMD -There are five combined areas between the two proposals that help with -parallelism without over-burdening the ISA with a huge proliferation of +There are six combined areas between the two proposals that help with +parallelism (increased performance, reduced power / area) without +over-burdening the ISA with a huge proliferation of instructions: * Fixed vs variable parallelism (fixed or variable "M" in SIMD) * Implicit vs fixed instruction bit-width (integral to instruction or not) * Implicit vs explicit type-conversion (compounded on bit-width) * Implicit vs explicit inner loops. +* Single-instruction LOAD/STORE. * Masks / tagging (selecting/preventing certain indexed elements from execution) The pros and cons of each are discussed and analysed below. @@ -184,6 +186,20 @@ applied to embedded processors" (ZOLC), optimising only the single inner loop seems inadequate, tending to suggest that ZOLC may be better off being proposed as an entirely separate Extension. +## Single-instruction LOAD/STORE + +In traditional Vector Architectures there are instructions which +result in multiple register-memory transfer operations resulting +from a single instruction. They're complicated to implement in hardware, +yet the benefits are a huge consistent regularisation of memory accesses +that can be highly optimised with respect to both actual memory and any +L1, L2 or other caches. + +Complications arise when Virtual Memory is involved: TLB cache misses +need to be dealt with, as do page faults. Some of the tradeoffs are +discussed in , Section +4.6. + ## Mask and Tagging (Predication) Tagging (aka Masks aka Predication) is a pseudo-method of implementing -- 2.30.2