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Scalable Designs for Multiple Product Offerings


UMS designs are scalable, both in hardware and software. Scalable in hardware means that the
performance of the UMS is proportional to the number of processors. Scalable in software means
that you use the same software for all UMS designs, independent of the number of processors used.
The scalable designs the UMS enables have powerful advantages. With a scalable design, one
design can serve multiple markets. You can have a low price and performance product with few
processors, a high price and performance product with many processors and a medium price,
medium performance product with a medium number of processors, all from a single design and all
running the same software. This multiplies design productivity, gives you a whole product line with
a single design and reduces time to market for a whole product line.
Scalable Designs for Technology Independence
The UMS enables scalable designs in software, essentially independent of the UMS hardware
running the software. This application software is independent of the number of processors in a
given technology. It is also independent of the number of processors in a new generation of silicon
technology. You run the same software on the new technology as on the old. All of the silicon
technology migration effort is confined to the single UMS hardware platform design effort of
implementing the UMS and its processors in the new technology.
Scalable UMS designs allow you to have multiple price point products from a single design. It also
allows you to easily move to the next generation of silicon. If the next generation of silicon
provides a 20% shrink in size, it also allows 25% more processors for the same size. With the new
process, you can have the same product price points based on silicon costs, and each product will
have 25% improved performance over the previous model. Not only can you reuse the software on
the new silicon; you can often reuse the market and pricing models for your products.
White Paper 5.0 11/10/99 Page: 7  November 1999
Document Number 1001-0002


UMS White Paper
Cradle UMS Technology
Cradle Technologies supplies UMS silicon products with software tools and libraries to support
them. Cradle plans to offer UMS standard silicon products that cover low cost, medium cost and
performance and high performance applications. Cradle offers software design tools for the UMS
that support software generation and simulation for the full chip. The software tools support both
software simulation and debug of UMS hardware. In addition to tools, Cradle will offer application
software libraries for a variety of applications. These libraries will include modules for popular I/O
devices.
Hardware Architecture
The UMS, as shown in Figure 2, is a multiprocessor system on a chip with programmable I/O for
interface to external devices. The UMS is a single chip consisting of clusters of processors
connected by a high bandwidth bus. These processor clusters, called Quads, communicate with
external DRAM and I/O interfaces through a DRAM controller and through a fully programmable
I/O system, respectively. Each Quad consists of four processor groups: hence the name Quad.
Each processor group is called a Multi-Stream Processor, or MSP.
The UMS uses a single 32-bit (expandable to 40+ bits) address for all register and memory
elements. Each register and memory element in the UMS has a unique address and is uniquely
addressable.
Quads
The quad is a cluster of processors. It is the primary unit of replication of the UMS. A UMS chip
has one or more Quads. Figure 3 shows a block diagram of a Quad.
Figure 3: Quad Block Diagram
MSP
PROGRAM
INTERFACE
PE
PE
PE
PE
MEM/
GLOBAL BUS
CACHE
UTIL
DATA
PROG
DSE
DSE
DSE
DSE
DSE
DSE
DSE
DSE
MEM/
DMA
CACHE
MEM
MEM
MEM
MEM
MEM
MEM
MEM
MEM
ECC
The Quad consists of four sets of processors, called Multi-Stream Processors (MSPs), program
and data memories, a programmable DMA unit and a global bus interface.
The MSP is the unit of processing for applications. An application uses one or more MSPs
depending on the performance required. Each MSP consists of a Processing Element (PE) and two
Digital Signal Engines (DSEs). The PEs are general purpose 32-bit processors, while the DSEs are
high performance computation engines. The DSEs do the work, and the PEs keep them busy.
White Paper 5.0 11/10/99 Page: 8  November 1999
Document Number 1001-0002
 
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