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R8000
The R8000 is a microprocessor chipset developed by MIPS Technologies, Inc. (MTI), Toshiba, and Weitek.Hsu 1994 It was the first implementation of the MIPS IV instruction set architecture. The R8000 is also known as the ''TFP'', for ''Tremendous Floating-Point'', its name during development. History Development of the R8000 started in the early 1990s at Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). The R8000 was specifically designed to provide the performance of circa 1990s supercomputers with a microprocessor instead of a central processing unit (CPU) built from many discrete components such as gate arrays. At the time, the performance of traditional supercomputers was not advancing as rapidly as reduced instruction set computer (RISC) microprocessors. It was predicted that RISC microprocessors would eventually match the performance of more expensive and larger supercomputers at a fraction of the cost and size, making computers with this level of performance more accessible and enabling deskside w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SGI Challenge
The Challenge, code-named ''Eveready'' (deskside models) and ''Terminator'' (rackmount models), is a family of server computers and supercomputers developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics in the early to mid-1990s that succeeded the earlier Power Series systems (not to be confused with IBM Power Systems). The Challenge was later succeeded by the NUMAlink-based Origin 200 and Origin 2000 in 1996. Models There are three distinctive models of the Challenge. The first model, simply known as the "Challenge" used the 64-bit R4400. With the introduction of the R8000, the Challenge was upgraded to support more processors and memory as well as featuring support for this new processor. Such systems are known as the "POWER Challenge". During the final years of the Challenge architecture's useful life, the line was upgraded to support R10000 microprocessors. Older Challenge systems using the R10000 were known as the "Challenge 10000", while the newer POWER Challenge systems using th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MIPS Technologies
MIPS Technologies, Inc., formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc., was an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of RISC CPU chips based on it. MIPS provides processor architectures and cores for digital home, networking, embedded, Internet of things and mobile applications. MIPS was founded in 1984 to commercialize the work being carried out at Stanford University on the MIPS architecture, a pioneering RISC design. The company generated intense interest in the late 1980s, seeing design wins with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Silicon Graphics (SGI), among others. By the early 1990s the market was crowded with new RISC designs and further design wins were limited. The company was purchased by SGI in 1992, by that time its only major customer, and won several new designs in the game console space. In 1998, SGI announced they would be transitioning off MIPS and spun off the company. After se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Register File
A register file is an array of processor registers in a central processing unit (CPU). Register banking is the method of using a single name to access multiple different physical registers depending on the operating mode. Modern integrated circuit-based register files are usually implemented by way of fast static RAMs with multiple ports. Such RAMs are distinguished by having dedicated read and write ports, whereas ordinary multiported SRAMs will usually read and write through the same ports. The instruction set architecture of a CPU will almost always define a set of registers which are used to stage data between memory and the functional units on the chip. In simpler CPUs, these ''architectural registers'' correspond one-for-one to the entries in a physical register file (PRF) within the CPU. More complicated CPUs use register renaming, so that the mapping of which physical entry stores a particular architectural register changes dynamically during execution. The register file ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MIPS IV
MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, Inc. developed by MIPS Computer Systems, now MIPS Technologies, based in the United States. There are multiple versions of MIPS: including MIPS I, II, III, IV, and V; as well as five releases of MIPS32/64 (for 32- and 64-bit implementations, respectively). The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit; 64-bit versions were developed later. As of April 2017, the current version of MIPS is MIPS32/64 Release 6. MIPS32/64 primarily differs from MIPS I–V by defining the privileged kernel mode System Control Coprocessor in addition to the user mode architecture. The MIPS architecture has several optional extensions. MIPS-3D which is a simple set of floating-point SIMD instructions dedicated to common 3D tasks, MDMX (MaDMaX) which is a more extens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Branch Prediction
In computer architecture, a branch predictor is a digital circuit that tries to guess which way a branch (e.g., an if–then–else structure) will go before this is known definitively. The purpose of the branch predictor is to improve the flow in the instruction pipeline. Branch predictors play a critical role in achieving high performance in many modern pipelined microprocessor architectures such as x86. Two-way branching is usually implemented with a conditional jump instruction. A conditional jump can either be "taken" and jump to a different place in program memory, or it can be "not taken" and continue execution immediately after the conditional jump. It is not known for certain whether a conditional jump will be taken or not taken until the condition has been calculated and the conditional jump has passed the execution stage in the instruction pipeline (see fig. 1). Without branch prediction, the processor would have to wait until the conditional jump instruction has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SGI Indigo² And Challenge M
The SGI Indigo2 (stylized as "Indigo2") and the SGI Challenge M are Unix workstations which were designed and sold by SGI from 1992 to 1997. The Indigo2, codenamed "Fullhouse", is a desktop workstation. The Challenge M is a server which differs from the Indigo2 only by a slightly differently colored and badged case, and the absence of graphics and sound hardware. Both systems are based on the MIPS processors, with EISA bus and SGI proprietary GIO64 expansion bus via a riser card. The Indigo preceded the Indigo2, which is succeeded by the Octane. Overview Indigo2 desktop workstations have two models: the teal Indigo2 and the purple IMPACT. Both have identical looking cases except color, and sub-model case badging. The CPU types, the amount of RAM, and graphics capabilities, depend on the model or sub-model variation. Power Indigo2 is a version of the teal Indigo2, with the R8000 chipset and strong floating-point arithmetic performance. The later IMPACT Indigo2 workstation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SGI Onyx
SGI Onyx is a series of visualization systems designed and manufactured by SGI, introduced in 1993 and offered in two models, deskside and rackmount, codenamed Eveready and Terminator respectively. The Onyx's basic system architecture is based on the SGI Challenge servers, but with graphics hardware. The Onyx was employed in early 1995 for development kits used to produce software for the Nintendo 64 and, because the technology was so new, the Onyx was noted as the major factor for the impressively high price of – for such kits. The Onyx was succeeded by the Onyx2 in 1996 and was discontinued on March 31, 1999. CPU The deskside variant can accept one CPU board, and the rackmount variant can take up to six CPU boards. Both models were launched with the IP19 CPU board with one, two, or four MIPS R4400 CPUs, initially with 100 and 150 MHz options and later increased to 200 and 250 MHz. Later, the IP21 CPU board was introduced, with one or two R8000 microprocessor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
R10000
The R10000, code-named "T5", is a RISC microprocessor implementation of the MIPS IV instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by MIPS Technologies, Inc. (MTI), then a division of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). The chief designers are Chris Rowen and Kenneth C. Yeager. The R10000 microarchitecture is known as ANDES, an abbreviation for Architecture with Non-sequential Dynamic Execution Scheduling. The R10000 largely replaces the R8000 in the high-end and the R4400 elsewhere. MTI was a fabless semiconductor company; the R10000 was fabricated by NEC and Toshiba. Previous fabricators of MIPS microprocessors such as Integrated Device Technology (IDT) and three others did not fabricate the R10000 as it was more expensive to do so than the R4000 and R4400. History The R10000 was introduced in January 1996 at clock frequencies of 175 MHz and 195 MHz. A 150 MHz version was introduced in the O2 product line in 1997, but discontinued shortly after due to customer prefer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CPU Cache
A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, which stores copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations. Most CPUs have a hierarchy of multiple cache levels (L1, L2, often L3, and rarely even L4), with different instruction-specific and data-specific caches at level 1. The cache memory is typically implemented with static random-access memory (SRAM), in modern CPUs by far the largest part of them by chip area, but SRAM is not always used for all levels (of I- or D-cache), or even any level, sometimes some latter or all levels are implemented with eDRAM. Other types of caches exist (that are not counted towards the "cache size" of the most important caches mentioned above), such as the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) which is part of the memory management unit (MMU) w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Address Generation Unit
The address generation unit (AGU), sometimes also called address computation unit (ACU), is an execution unit inside central processing units (CPUs) that calculates addresses used by the CPU to access main memory. By having address calculations handled by separate circuitry that operates in parallel with the rest of the CPU, the number of CPU cycles required for executing various machine instructions can be reduced, bringing performance improvements. While performing various operations, CPUs need to calculate memory addresses required for fetching data from the memory; for example, in-memory positions of array elements must be calculated before the CPU can fetch the data from actual memory locations. Those address-generation calculations involve different integer arithmetic operations, such as addition, subtraction, modulo operations, or bit shifts. Often, calculating a memory address involves more than one general-purpose machine instruction, which do not necessarily deco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Translation Lookaside Buffer
A translation lookaside buffer (TLB) is a memory cache that stores the recent translations of virtual memory to physical memory. It is used to reduce the time taken to access a user memory location. It can be called an address-translation cache. It is a part of the chip's memory-management unit (MMU). A TLB may reside between the CPU and the CPU cache, between CPU cache and the main memory or between the different levels of the multi-level cache. The majority of desktop, laptop, and server processors include one or more TLBs in the memory-management hardware, and it is nearly always present in any processor that utilizes paged or segmented virtual memory. The TLB is sometimes implemented as content-addressable memory (CAM). The CAM search key is the virtual address, and the search result is a physical address. If the requested address is present in the TLB, the CAM search yields a match quickly and the retrieved physical address can be used to access memory. This is called a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instruction Pipeline
In computer engineering, instruction pipelining or ILP is a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. Pipelining attempts to keep every part of the processor busy with some instruction by dividing incoming instructions into a series of sequential steps (the eponymous "pipeline") performed by different processor units with different parts of instructions processed in parallel. Concept and motivation In a pipelined computer, instructions flow through the central processing unit (CPU) in stages. For example, it might have one stage for each step of the von Neumann cycle: Fetch the instruction, fetch the operands, do the instruction, write the results. A pipelined computer usually has "pipeline registers" after each stage. These store information from the instruction and calculations so that the logic gates of the next stage can do the next step. This arrangement lets the CPU complete an instruction on each clock cycle. It is common for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
