The

Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...

FR-V (Fujitsu

RISC In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comp ...

- VLIW) is one of the very few

processors A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...

ever able to process both a

very long instruction word Very long instruction word (VLIW) refers to instruction set architectures designed to exploit instruction level parallelism (ILP). Whereas conventional central processing units (CPU, processor) mostly allow programs to specify instructions to exe ...

(VLIW) and

vector processor In computing, a vector processor or array processor is a central processing unit (CPU) that implements an instruction set where its instructions are designed to operate efficiently and effectively on large one-dimensional arrays of data calle ...

instructions at the same time, increasing

throughput Network throughput (or just throughput, when in context) refers to the rate of message delivery over a communication channel, such as Ethernet or packet radio, in a communication network. The data that these messages contain may be delivered ove ...

with high

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different f ...

while increasing

performance per watt In computing, performance per watt is a measure of the energy efficiency of a particular computer architecture or computer hardware. Literally, it measures the rate of computation that can be delivered by a computer for every watt of power con ...

and hardware efficiency. The family was presented in 1999. Its design was influenced by the VPP500/5000 models of the Fujitsu VP/

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

vector processor

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructio ...

line.

Featuring a 1–8 way very long instruction word (VLIW, Multiple Instruction Multiple Data (MIMD), up to 256 bit) instruction set it additionally uses a 4-way

single instruction, multiple data Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) is a type of parallel processing in Flynn's taxonomy. SIMD can be internal (part of the hardware design) and it can be directly accessible through an instruction set architecture (ISA), but it should ...

(SIMD) vector processor core. A

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculati ...

instruction set in the

superscalar A superscalar processor is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single instruction per clock cycle, a sup ...

core is combined with most variants integrating a dual

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...

media processor A media processor, mostly used as an image/ video processor, is a microprocessor-based system-on-a-chip which is designed to deal with digital streaming data in real-time (e.g. display refresh) rates. These devices can also be considered a class ...

also in VLIW and vector architecture. Each processor core is superpipelined as well as 4-unit

. A typical

integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

integrates a

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memor ...

and further multiplies speed by integrating multiple cores. Due to the very low power requirements it is a solution even for battery-powered applications.

Variants

The family started with the FR-500, includes FR-300, FR-400, FR-450, FR-550 and FR1000 architecture

processors, can run

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

RTLinux RTLinux is a hard realtime real-time operating system (RTOS) microkernel that runs the entire Linux operating system as a fully preemptive process. The hard real-time property makes it possible to control robots, data acquisition systems, ma ...

VxWorks VxWorks is a real-time operating system (or RTOS) developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aptiv. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems requiring real-time, determi ...

, eCos, or

ITRON Itron is an American technology company that offers products and services on energy and water resource management. Its headquarters is in Liberty Lake, Washington, United States. Its products are related to smart grid, smart gas and smart water ...

and is also supported by the

Softune Softune is an Integrated development environment from Fujitsu for the Fujitsu FR, FR-V and F²MC processor families. It provides an REALOS µITRON realtime kernel. It is for example used for Nikon DSLRs (see Nikon EXPEED) and some Pentax K moun ...

Integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

and the

GNU Compiler Collection The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is an optimizing compiler produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages, hardware architectures and operating systems. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes GCC as free softwar ...

or GNUPro. It is often used for

image processing An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensio ...

video processing In electronics engineering, video processing is a particular case of signal processing, in particular image processing, which often employs video filters and where the input and output signals are video files or video streams. Video processing ...

with most variants including a dual

media-processor.

Technology

The 2005 presented FR1000 uses a core with 8-way 256-bit VLIW (

MIMD In computing, multiple instruction, multiple data (MIMD) is a technique employed to achieve parallelism. Machines using MIMD have a number of processors that function asynchronously and independently. At any time, different processors may be exe ...

) filling its superpipeline as well as a 4-unit

architecture ( Integer (ALU)-,

Floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can ...

- and two media-processor-units), further increasing its

peak performance Peak or The Peak may refer to: Basic meanings Geology * Mountain peak ** Pyramidal peak, a mountaintop that has been sculpted by erosion to form a point Mathematics * Peak hour or rush hour, in traffic congestion * Peak (geometry), an (''n''-3)-d ...

of each core to up to 28 instructions per clock cycle. Like other VLIW-architectures 1 way is needed to load the next 256-bit instruction: 7-ways usable. Due to the used 4-way

(SIMD)

-core, it counts to up to 112 data-operations per cycle and core. The included 4-way vector processor units are a

integer An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign ( −1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the languag ...

arithmetic logic unit In computing, an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) is a combinational digital circuit that performs arithmetic and bitwise operations on integer binary numbers. This is in contrast to a floating-point unit (FPU), which operates on floating point num ...

and

floating point unit Floating may refer to: * a type of dental work performed on horse teeth * use of an isolation tank * the guitar-playing technique where chords are sustained rather than scratched * ''Floating'' (play), by Hugh Hughes * Floating (psychological ...

as well as a

media-processor, which can process up to twice the operations in parallel. The included integer- and floating-point unit enables the FR-V to execute complex tasks fully independent without need for help from a

control unit The control unit (CU) is a component of a computer's central processing unit (CPU) that directs the operation of the processor. A CU typically uses a binary decoder to convert coded instructions into timing and control signals that direct the op ...

; for example the Nikon Expeed needs only a slowly clocked, quite simple

Fujitsu FR The Fujitsu FR (Fujitsu RISC) is a 32-bit RISC processor family. New variants include a floating point unit and partly video input analog-to-digital converter and digital signal processor. It is supported by Softune, GNU Compiler Collection and oth ...

controller as the main control unit for all included FR-V, DSP and

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

processors and

data communication Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or p ...

and other modules. Some processors have integrated

memory management unit A memory management unit (MMU), sometimes called paged memory management unit (PMMU), is a computer hardware unit having all memory references passed through itself, primarily performing the translation of virtual memory addresses to physical a ...

(MMU), allowing to run virtual multitasking

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s (also

real-time operating system A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) for real-time applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. An RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix, which m ...

s) with hardware

memory protection Memory protection is a way to control memory access rights on a computer, and is a part of most modern instruction set architectures and operating systems. The main purpose of memory protection is to prevent a process from accessing memory that h ...

Applications

They are used to build the

Milbeaut The Socionext Milbeaut image/video processors are media processors in multi-processor system on a chip architecture. Started by Fujitsu with the M-1 Series in 2000 each generation (2013: 7th) has several variants regarding included modules and pr ...

signal processors specialized for image processing, with the newest version additionally including an FR-V based HD video H.264 codec engine.Nikon: EXPEED3 (D-SLR series)
The Milbeaut image engines are included in the

Leica S2 The Leica S2 is a digital medium format DSLR camera announced by Leica Camera on September 23, 2008. It features a Kodak-made custom CCD sensor measuring 30×45 mm and containing 37 million pixels. This sensor has a 26% longer diagonal and ...

and

Leica M (Typ 240) The Leica M (Typ 240) is a full-frame digital rangefinder camera of Leica Camera AG. It was introduced in September 2012, and is the successor to the Leica M9 range of cameras. The M uses a 24-megapixel image sensor. The camera is the first M ...

, Nikon DSLRs (see Nikon Expeed), some Pentax K mount cameras and for the

Sigma Sigma (; uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς; grc-gre, σίγμα) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 200. In general mathematics, uppercase Σ is used a ...

True-II processor.

References

External links

* * * *
FR-V multi-media (translated)
{{Microcontrollers Digital signal processors Fujitsu microprocessors Parallel computing SIMD computing Very long instruction word computing

Variants

Technology

Applications

See also

References

External links