The Itanium Chip   Term Paper ID:39674 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Analyzes the successes, failures, architecture and application of the Itanium computer chip...... More...

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Paper Abstract: Analyzes the successes, failures, architecture and application of the Itanium computer chip, an Intel chip. Discusses memory management and piping. Serving the needs of high performance work stations and servers. Paper Introduction: Analysis of the Itanium Chip Introduction The microprocessor chip is the heart of the personal computer andIntel is a dominant provider of chips Intel\'s chip family including thex and Pentium chips have been the primary platform on which Windows-based computers are based This is a highly competitive field however and chip manufacturers are eager to introduce faster cooler morepowerful and less expensive chips just as computer manufacturers andsoftware developers are eager to take advantages of advances in chiptechnology This research considers another Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Intel Corporation. Parallelism andscalability are two key features of this processor, which builds on Intel'sphilosophy of multiple cores on a single processor. Retrieved 29 Apr 2 7 from: .Intel Itanium 2 processor reference manual for software development and optimization. Retrieved 29 Apr 2 7 from: .Shankland, S. ReferencesAyguadй, E., & Llosa, J. Coherence is maintainedbased on the implementation and is thus not visible from an architecturalstandpoint. (n.d.). Overview of Itanium The 64-bit Itanium processor is designed to serve the needs of high-performance workstations and servers, and makes use of Explicitly ParallelInstruction Computing (EPIC). Hint pre-fetching takesa specified line or ranges of lines to be taken. Retrieved 29 Apr 2 7 from: . For example,previous processor architectures required that a processor's instructioncache be consistent to other processors' data caches. (2 3, March). The Itanium processor uses thesystem bus for both normal data and interrupt data and thus eliminates thisordering problem. Also, instructions behind the group in thepipeline will also be stalled (Reference Manual, 2 4). Superscale processors (Processadors superescalars). Conclusion The Itanium processors was designed to provide superior performanceover traditional processors in demanding environments. Intel's chip family, including thex86 and Pentium chips, have been the primary platform on which Windows-based computers are based. TheItanium also move from a pin-based interrupt mechanism to a signal-basedapproach. (2 4, May). Allocation control for memorymanagement is provided via three tools: locality hints, explicit pre-fetchand implicit pre-fetch. This research considers another Intel chip, the Itanium, andspecifically the architecture of the Itanium-including memory managementand piping. Ordering becomes an issue with thisapproach since it is possible for an interrupt to reach the processorbefore a data write request, for example. Universitat Politechnica de Catalunya. Similarly, Itaniumdoes not require that one processor's instruction caches are consistentwith the instruction caches of other processors. Previous processors usedtwo different paths for interrupt data and other types of data-so-called"normal" data moved on the system bus. Retrieved 29 Apr 2 7 from: .Intel Itanium 2 processor hardware developer's manual. Intel Corporation. Interrupts The Itanium processor uses an advanced interrupt controller toaccommodate the scalability and performance requirements of the processor.From the platform perspective, the interrupt controller is integrated withI/O; this minimizes interrupt delays and eliminates the cost ofimplementing a second component into the system. Retrieved 29 Apr 2 7 from: .Intel Itanium processor family interrupt architecture guide. There is noupper limit to the number of interrupt sources that can reside on a buswith the signal approach, however (Interrupt Architecture Guide, 2 3). Explicit pre-fetch provides specific lines to bereferenced; these are moved to a location specified in the locality hint(). Memory Management Cache exists between memory and register files, and can contain bothtemporal and non-temporal structures. Once the operandshave been made available (through the destination register of the renamebuffer), the instruction is ready for execution. Retrieved 29 Apr 2 7 from: .Intel Itanium architecture software developer's manual, volume 1. Under the Itanium architecture, it is not necessary for variousinstruction caches to be consistent with one another. This provides greater simplicity of architecture and helps tominimize conflicts that might arise from traditional and complex approachesto coherence (Software Developer's Manual, 2 6). Operating systems. The architectureincorporates these design goals through its approach to memory management,scheduling and integrated interrupt processing. (2 6, January). Analysis of the Itanium Chip Introduction The microprocessor chip is the heart of the personal computer, andIntel is a dominant provider of chips. The Itanium processor makes use of reservation stations to holdinstructions until all required operands are available. Intel Corporation. The Itanium processor supports both streaming and hint pre-fetching.Streaming pre-fetching takes the next cache lines. This means that ifone instruction in the group encounters a stall condition, all instructionsin the group are stalled. Locality hints use load, store and explicit pre-fetch instructions. Pre-fetching is used toreduce instruction cache misses, and building pre-fetching into the cachedesign is intended to enhance the processor's performance (ReferenceManual, 2 4). This approach depends on having a significantamount of resources available and is ideally suited for large-scaleenvironments where there are numerous-even thousands-of processors. Instructions are issuedand executed in assembly order, and once instructions are issued as agroup, they proceed as a group through the pipeline. (2 5, September 5). Intel Corporation. Silicon.com. The Itanium interrupt philosophy also seeks to minimize softwarecontext switching overhead by using the interrupt service routine toprocess all pending interrupts within the current priority level. Theprocessor is operating-system independent, and is designed to work well inWindows, Unix and Linux environments (Shankland, 2 5). Following is a block diagram of the Itanium chip ("Intel Itanium 2,"2 2): [pic] Pipe Scheduling, Pre-Fetching, Reservation Station The core pipeline is eight stages, as follows: instruction pointergeneration (IPG), instruction rotation (ROT), instruction template decode,expand and disperse (EXP), rename and recode (for register stack androtating registers-REN), register file read (REG), execution (EXE), finalexception detection (DET), and write back (WRB). External I/O interrupts are also delivered faster inthis approach since they travel on the I/O bus (). As the name implies, EPIC combinesprocessing resources with compilers in order to provide parallel executionexplicit to the processor. This is a highly competitive field, however,and chip manufacturers are eager to introduce faster, cooler, morepowerful, and less expensive chips just as computer manufacturers andsoftware developers are eager to take advantages of advances in chiptechnology. Reservations can beunified in a single structure; this approach is intended to provide smoothand integrated scheduling (Ayguadй & Llosa, n.d.). (2 2, July). This approach also facilitates scalability with thesystem bus speed. When a pin system is used, additional pins must be allocated toaccommodate devices when new interrupt sources are added. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.