白皮书：微处理器Cortex A8指南

　　The Need

　　Next-generation digital entertainment and mobile communications devices are driving the need for flexible high-performance processing solutions that can meet the needs of the low-power， cost sensitive markets. Smart phones are becoming the center of your life， combining entertainment， gaming， internet services and seamless connectivity to digital entertainment devices. In a competitive and changing marketplace where digital entertainment and communications devices are converging， the need for a high-performance processor that can meet both the demanding performance requirements of leading-edge consumer entertainment devices and the tight power requirements for advanced mobile products is clear.

　　The Sol ution

　　The Cortex™-A8 processor is the highest performance， most power-efficient processor ever developed by ARM. With the ability to scale in speed from 600MHz to greater than 1GHz， the Cortex-A8 processor can meet the requirements for power optimized mobile devices with a power budget of less than 300mW and for performance optimized consumer applications requiring 2000 Dhrystone MIPS. The Cortex-A8 processor is ARM’s first superscalar processor featuring NEON™ technology for multimedia and signal processing， Jazelle®-RCT （Realtime Compilation Target） technology for efficient support of ahead-of-time and just-in-time compilation of Java and other bytecode languages and Thumb®-2 technology for enhanced code density and performance. The Cortex-A8 processor also supports TrustZone™ technology for security and the AMBA 3 AXI bus， making it the next natural step up in performance for next-generation applications.

　　Wha t ena bl es it

　　The ARM Cortex-A8 processor’s sophisticated pipeline architecture is based on dual， symmetric， in-order issue， 13-stage pipelines with advanced dynamic branch prediction and static scheduling achieving 2.0 DMIPS/MHz.

　　NEON media engine operates as a data processing engine attached to the end of the main processor pipeline and is able to process demanding applications such as VGA H.264 30fps video decode with a clock frequency as low as 400MHz. Both the main pipeline and the NEON engine are supported directly by integrated high-performance Level 1 and Level 2 caches that work together to minimize access latency， minimize external bus traffic， and support high bandwidth data streaming to NEON media engine. The Cortex-A8 processor’s

　　DFT/Test Debug ETM

　　IFetchIDecodeIExecute Load store

　　FlagsALU1

　　I-sideL1PrefetchDecode &Dependency LoadL1 cacheD-side

　　L1cacheandsequencercheckand ALU2 storeinterfaceL1

　　RAMinterface branch issueRegBank RAM

　　prediction

　　MAC

　　TLB TLB

　　Level 2Instruction and Data DMA arbitrationNEON unit

　　cache NEON Issue and

　　Decode NEON load

　　instruction forward

　　control data queue

　　L2 cache and preload engine queue control

　　A 8

　　NEON NEON

　　-

　　Floating Load

　　™Fill and eviction queue

　　L2 cacheL2 cache Point Store

　　X NEON

　　data RAMtag RAM RegBank

　　E BIUWrite NEON

　　T buffer VFPLite

　　Integer

　　C O R

　　AXI

　　industry-leading performance and power efficiency is enabled by combining advanced technology such as the ARM® Artisan® AdvantageHS library with enhanced design flows supporting pure synthesis， as well as structured， and custom design.

　　Eas y to use

　　The Cortex-A8 processor， supported by ARM’s complete ecosystem of technology; makes the Cortex-A8 processor easy to use in complex systems. Innovative new products supporting the Cortex-A8 processor include： RealView® SoC Designer （which provides cycle accurate ESL models for architectural exploration）， System Generator （which provides fast instruction accurate simulation models for software development）， ， RealView Development Suite 3.1 with optional Vectorizing Compiler， AMBA® Designer interconnect design tool， CoreSight™ debug and trace， RealView Hardware Platforms providing implementations of Cortex-A8 on FPGA for evaluation of the technology and early software development and SoC prototyping. and ARM Artisan AdvantageHS libraries and RAMs.