Development of a multimedia mobile processor

Handheld devices, like cellular phones and PDA (personal digital assistants), have succeeded mainly through the power conscious design of mobile processors. This has resulted in a lack of performable features compared with PCs. Yet, the trend of handheld devices in recent years has been to add sophisticated functions for multimedia processing. Since such a scheme has relied on a software approach, it is hard to achieve high speed with low power. Setting up the drastic throughput of 1 GIPS (10⁹ instructions/sec) and 1 W power dissipation to meet the demand for power, speed, and usability, we have developed a Java-embedded mobile processor core named gorilla. This paper focuses on the design approach to one of gorilla´s derivatives using 0.35 μm CMOS standard cell technology.