Architecture and design automation for application-specific processors

Application-specific instruction-set processors (ASIPs) are specialized to meet the performance and energy needs of individual or small sets of applications. Of particular importance is the inclusion of custom instruction set extensions (ISEs) that accelerate the performance of the applications from which they are derived. This manuscript reviews the architectural features of ASIPs that facilitate high performance and low energy consumption, and provides an overview of compiler algorithms to automatically identify and synthesize ISEs from an application specified using a high-level language. © 2011 IEEE