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PowerPC AS A10 64-bit RISC microprocessor

1996; IBM; Volume: 40; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1147/rd.404.0495

2151-8556

J. W. Bishop, M. J. Campion, T. L. Jeremiah, S. J. Mercier, E. J. Mohring, K. P. Pfarr, Barry Rudolph, Gregory Still, Tennis S. White,

VLSI and Analog Circuit Testing

The PowerPC AS™ A10 64-bit RISC microprocessor is a 4.7-million-transistor integrated circuit design, using IBM CMOS 5L 0.5-µm, 3-V, four-level-metal ASIC technology. Support for the PowerPC AS architecture is implemented in a 213-mm 2 die using a semicustom design methodology. Chip density and speed are enhanced through the use of custom macros and multiport arrays. An on-chip phase-locked-loop circuit is used to reduce chip-to-chip clock skew. Full utilization of the four-level-metal interconnect technology was achieved through architectural floorplanning, performance clustering, and timing-driven placement and wiring, with a total wire length of over 102 meters placed on the 14.6 × 14.6-mm die. The microprocessor is a pipelined, superscalar design with five separate functional units, a 4KB instruction cache, and an 8KB data cache. The design includes parity, error-correction, and error-logging functions, as well as self-test for logic and arrays during power-on. The design is robust and implements a wide range of performance configurations at the system level, allowing direct attachment of DRAM to the processor, or high-performance L2 cache options using high-speed SRAM. An on-chip system I/O bus and bus controller are provided for attachment of peripherals.