MINCE: matching instructions using combinational equivalence for extensible processor

Designing custom-extensible instructions for extensible processors is a computationally complex task because of the large design space. The task of automatically matching candidate instructions in an application (e.g. written in a high-level language) to a pre-designed library of extensible instructions is especially challenging. Previous approaches have focused on identifying extensible instructions (e.g. through profiling), synthesizing extensible instructions, estimating expected performance gains etc. In this paper we introduce our approach of automatically matching extensible instructions as this key step is missing in automating the entire design flow of an ASIP with extensible instruction capabilities. Since matching using simulation is practically infeasible (simulation time), and traditional pattern matching approaches would not yield reliable results (ambiguity related to a functionally equivalent code that can be represented in many different ways), we adopt combinational equivalence checking. Our MINCE tool as part of our ASIP design flow consists of a translator, a filtering algorithm and a combinational equivalence checking tool. We report matching times of extensible instructions that are 7.3x faster on average (using Mediabench applications) compared to the best known approaches to the problem (partial simulations). In all our experiments MINCE matched correctly and the outcome of the matching step yielded an average speedup of the application of 2.47x. As a summary, our work represents a key step towards automating the whole design flow of an ASIP with extensible instruction capabilities.