PipeRench implementation of the instruction path coprocessor

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how an Instruction Path Coprocessor (I-COP) can be efficiently implemented using the PipeRench reconfigurable architecture. An I-COP is a programmable on-chip coprocessor that operates on the core processor's instructions to transform them into a new format that can be more efficiently executed. The I-COP can be use to implement many sophisticated hardware code modification techniques. We show how four specific techniques can be mapped to the PipeRench pipelined computation model. The experimental results show that a PipeRench I-COP used to perform trace construction and trace optimizations for a trace cache fill unit not only achieves good performance gains but can potentially be implemented in less than 10 mm2 (assuming 0.18 micron technology) or approximately 3% of the die area of a current high-end microprocessor. We believe these results demonstrate the usefulness and feasibility of the I-COP concept.