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        <title><![CDATA[TB-Articles - TechBites]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[TechBites - The Science and Technology Collaborative Community]]></description>
        <link>http://www.techbites.com/</link>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">1213-278</guid>
	            <title><![CDATA[Goldilocks and the three DSPs: when and why to use Target's ASIP tools: Re: Interesting]]></title>
	            <link>/200911201213/myblog/articles/z0009-goldilocks-and-the-three-dsps-when-and-why-to-use-targets-asip-tools.html</link>
	            <description><![CDATA[
	            	            
nML is described fairly extensively at http://nml.retarget.com (requires registration).  The information provided there includes an excerpt on nML taken from the book "Processor Description Languages", edited by P. Mishra and N. Dutt (© 2008 Morgan Kauffman, June 2008).  This book describes many processor description languages (nML, LISA, others), and enables comparison.  Suffice it to say that comparison here would be too much for a blog-site.

Regarding your question about the compiler, note that Target's compiler is a "retargetable" compiler.  What this means (for those that aren't familiar with this term) is that the compiler reads in the processor model so that it understands the various details of the internal architecture (i.e. which operations are supported, what does the pipeline look like, what specialized operations exist in the architecture, how much instruction-level parallelism is possible, does the architecture support vector operations, etc.), and then behaves as if it had been custom built for that architecture.  The goodness of this approach is all about how well the C coder can exploit the efficiencies provided for in the architecture, and so the compiler is perhaps the most important element of the entire tool-chain.

If you think about this problem in the context of an arbitrary processor architecture (or even datapath), then you will realize that the job of the compiler isn't that different than that of a C synthesis tool.  That is, it has to map an arbitrary, user-defined algorithm on a datapath - using the resource sharing, scheduling, and optimizations that you might typically find in an ESL synthesis tool.  Realizing that, you then wouldn't be surprised to know that Target's C-compiler has roots in C-synthesis technology (as opposed to being rooted in gcc like so many other compilers).  These roots are key to delivering on the efficiencies needed for highly specialized architectures.

If you are interested to learn more, there are a host of interesting papers available such as customer designs (a Reed-Solomon encoder design for wireless communications can be found here - http://www.retarget.com/resources/wireless.php) as well as more methodology oriented papers written by Target (at http://www.retarget.com/resources.php).

Of course, if you have an interest to learn more directly, feel free to send me a note.
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                <category><![CDATA[TB-Articles]]></category>
                <pubDate>Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:56:43 -0600</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">1213-264</guid>
	            <title><![CDATA[Goldilocks and the three DSPs: when and why to use Target's ASIP tools: Interesting]]></title>
	            <link>/200911201213/myblog/articles/z0009-goldilocks-and-the-three-dsps-when-and-why-to-use-targets-asip-tools.html</link>
	            <description><![CDATA[
	            	            I see that this uses nML as the language for describing the processor. How does thins compare to LISA. It is also not clear to me how the optimizing C compiler would know about custom capabilities of the architecture.

I guess this article is enough to get me salivating, but I want soooo much more information. Perhaps Target has some white-papers they could put up on the site.	            ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[TB-Articles]]></category>
                <pubDate>Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:33:52 -0600</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">1213-255</guid>
	            <title><![CDATA[Goldilocks and the three DSPs: when and why to use Target's ASIP tools: Love the analogy]]></title>
	            <link>/200911201213/myblog/articles/z0009-goldilocks-and-the-three-dsps-when-and-why-to-use-targets-asip-tools.html</link>
	            <description><![CDATA[
	            	            Kenton, I love the three bears analogy!  One detail though, it was a JPEG encoder that was done in 23 days -- decoders are significantly easier.

John Fox
Applications Engineer
Target Compiler Technologies	            ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[TB-Articles]]></category>
                <pubDate>Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:28:13 -0600</pubDate>
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