A 160-MHz, 32-b, 0.5-W CMOS RISC microprocessor

Author

Montanaro, James ; Witek, Richard T. ; Anne, Krishna ; Black, Andrew J. ; Cooper, E.M. ; Dobberpuhl, Daniel W. ; Donahue, Paul M. ; Eno, Jin ; Hoeppner, Gregory W. ; Kruckemyer, David ; Lee, Tomas H. ; Lin, Peter C M ; Madden, Liam ; Murray, Daniel ; Pear

Author_Institution

Digital Equipment Corp., Austin, TX, USA

Volume

31

Issue

11

fYear

1996

fDate

11/1/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1703

Lastpage

1714

Abstract

This paper describes a 160 MHz 500 mW 32 b StrongARM(R) microprocessor designed for low-power, low-cost applications. The chip implements the ARM(R) V4 instruction set and is bus compatible with earlier implementations. The pin interface runs at 3.3 V but the internal power supplies can vary from 1.5 to 2.2 V, providing various options to balance performance and power dissipation. At 160 MHz internal clock speed with a nominal Vdd of 1.65 V, it delivers 185 Dhrystone 2.1 MIPS while dissipating less than 450 mW. The range of operating points runs from 100 MHz at 1.65 V dissipating less than 300 mW to 200 MHz at 2.0 V for less than 900 mW. An on-chip PLL provides the internal clock based on a 3.68 MHz clock input. The chip contains 2.5 million transistors, 90% of which are in the two 16 kB caches. It is fabricated in a 0.35-μm three-metal CMOS process with 0.35 V thresholds and 0.25 μm effective channel lengths. The chip measures 7.8 mm×6.4 mm and is packaged in a 144-pin plastic thin quad flat pack (TQFP) package

Keywords

CMOS digital integrated circuits; instruction sets; microprocessor chips; reduced instruction set computing; timing; 0.25 micron; 0.35 micron; 1.5 to 2.2 V; 100 to 200 MHz; 16 kB; 160 MHz; 2.1 MIPS; 3.3 V; 300 to 900 mW; 32 bit; 500 mW; ARM V4 instruction set; CMOS RISC microprocessor; StrongARM; low-cost applications; low-power applications; onchip PLL; plastic TQFP package; thin quad flat pack; three-metal CMOS process; CMOS process; Clocks; Electronics packaging; Microprocessors; Phase locked loops; Plastic packaging; Power dissipation; Power supplies; Reduced instruction set computing; Semiconductor device measurement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JSSC.1996.542315

Filename

542315