• ETRI Journal
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.301-310
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• 2013

Nowadays, the multicore processor is watched with interest by people all over the world. As the design technology of system on chip has developed, observing and controlling the processor core's internal state has not been easy. Therefore, multicore processor debugging is very difficult and time-consuming. Thus, we need a reliable and efficient debugger to find the bugs. In this paper, we propose an on-chip debug architecture for multicore processors that is easily adaptable and flexible. It is based on the JTAG standard and supports monitoring mode debugging, which is different from run-stop mode debugging. Compared with the debug architecture that supports the run-stop mode debugging, the proposed architecture is easily applied to a debugger and has the advantage of having a desirable gate count and execution cycle. To verify the on-chip debug architecture, it is applied to the debugger of the prototype multicore processor and is tested by interconnecting it with a software debugger based on GDB and configured for the target processor.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.44-54
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• 2012

Because of the intrinsic lack of internal-system observability and controllability in highly integrated multicore processors, very restricted access is allowed for the debugging of erroneous chip behavior. Therefore, the building of an efficient debug function is an important consideration in the design of multicore processors. In this paper, we propose a flexible on-chip debug architecture that embeds a special logic supporting the debug functionality in the multicore processor. It is designed to support run-stop-type debug functions that can halt and control the execution of the multicore processor at breakpoint events and inspect the possible causes of any errors. The debug architecture consists of the following three functional components: the core debug support block, the multicore debug support block, and the debug interface and control block. By embedding this debug infrastructure, the embedded processor cores within the multicore processor can be debugged simultaneously as well as independently. The debug control is performed by employing a JTAG-based scanning operation. We apply this on-chip debug architecture to build a debugger for a prototype multicore processor and demonstrate the validity and scalability of our approach.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.123-128
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• 2012

In order to overcome the hardware complexity and performance limit problems, recently the multi-core architecture has been prevalent. For hardware simplicity, usually RISC processor is adopted as the unit core processor. However, if the performance of unit core processor is enhanced, the overall performance of the multi-core processor architecture can be further enhanced. In this paper, in-order superscalar processor is utilized as the core for the multi-core processor architecture. Using SPEC 2000 benchmarks as input, the trace-driven simulation has been performed for the number of superscalar cores between 2 and 16 and the window size of 4 to 16 extensively. As a result, the 16-core superscalar processor for the window size of 16 results in 8.4 times speed up over the single core superscalar processor. When compared with the same number of cores, the multi-core superscalar processor performance doubles that of the multi-core RISC processor.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.1177-1180
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• 2005

This paper present a method of constructing the multimedia processor architecture. The proposed multimedia processor architecture be able to handle each text, sound, and video in one chip. Also it have interactive function that is a characteristics of multimedia. Specially, the proposed multimedia processor be able to addressing nodes in memory map without software, and it is completely reconfigurable depend on data. Also it as able to process time and space common that have synchronous/asynchronous and it is able to protect continuous and dynamic media bus collision, and local and overall common memory structure. The proposed multimedia processor architecture apply to virtual reality and mixed reality.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.165-167
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• 2006

In this paper we present a new-generation sensor network processor which is not optimized in circuit level, but in system architecture level. The new design build on a conventional processor architecture, improving the design by focusing on application oriented specification, ISA, and micro-architectural optimization that reduce overall design size and advance energy-per-instruction. The design employs harvard architecture, 8-bit data paths, and an compact 19 bit wide RISC ISA. The design also features a unique interrupt handler which offloads periodical monitoring jobs from the main part of CPU. Our most efficient design is capable of running at 300 KHz (0.3 MIPS) while consuming only about few pJ/instruction.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.32 no.9C
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• pp.913-921
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• 2007

Retargetable compiler which generates executable code for a target processor and performance profiler are required to design a processor optimized for a specific application. This paper presents an architecture exploration methodology based on ADL (Architecture Description Language). We synthesized instruction set and optimized processor structure using information extracted from application program. The information of operation sequences executed frequently and register usage are used for processor optimization. Architecture exploration has been performed for JPEG encoder to show the effectiveness of the system. The ASIP designed using the proposed method shows 1.97 times better performance.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.54 no.12
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• pp.723-731
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• 2005

The $4{\times}4$ homogeneous transformation matrix is a compact representation of orientation and position of an object in robotics and computer graphics. A coordinate transformation is accomplished through the successive multiplications of homogeneous matrices, each of which represents the orientation and position of each corresponding link. Thus, for real time control applications in robotics or animation in computer graphics, the fast multiplication of homogeneous matrices is quite demanding. In this paper, a parallel-architecture vector processor is designed for this purpose. The processor has several key features. For the accuracy of computation for real application, the operands of the processors are floating point numbers based on the IEEE Standard 754. For the parallelism and reduction of hardware redundancy, the processor takes column vectors of homogeneous matrices as multiplication unit. To further improve the throughput, the processor structure and its control is based on a pipe-lined structure. Since the designed processor can be used as a special purpose coprocessor in robotics and computer graphics, additionally to special matrix/matrix or matrix/vector multiplication, several other useful instructions for various transformation algorithms are included for wide application of the new design. The suggested instruction set will serve as standard in future processor design for Robotics and Computer Graphics. The design is verified using FPGA implementation. Also a comparative performance improvement of the proposed design is studied compared to a uni-processor approach for possibilities of its real time application.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.837-840
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• 2005

This paper presents 3D graphics lighting processor based on vector processing using pipeline chaining. The lighting process of 3D graphics rendering contains many arithmetic operations and its complexity is very high. For high throughput, proposed processor uses pipelined functional units. To implement fully pipelined architecture, we have to use many functional units. Hence, the number of functional units is restricted. However, with the restricted number of pipelined functional units, the utilization of the units is reduced and a resource reservation problem is caused. To resolve these problems, the proposed architecture uses vector processing using pipeline chaining. Due to its pipeline chaining based architecture, it can perform 4.09M vertices per 1 second with 100MHz frequency. The proposed 3D graphics lighting processor is compatible with OpenGL ES API and the design is implemented and verified on FPGA.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.62 no.2
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• pp.252-256
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• 2013

In order to overcome the complexity and performance limit problems of superscalar processors, the multi-core architecture has been prevalent recently. Usually, the number of cores mostly used for the multi-core processor architecture ranges from 2 to 16. However in the near future, more than 32-cores are likely to be utilized, which is called as many-core processor architecture. Using SPEC 2000 benchmarks as input, the trace-driven simulation has been performed for the 32 to 1024 many-core architectures extensively. For 1024-cores, the average performance scores 15.7 IPC, but the performance increase rate is saturated.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1993.10a
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• pp.1012-1017
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• 1993

In this paper, the instruction set and the architecture of a RISC processor for programmable logic controller is suggested. From the measurement of existing programs, the characteristics of ladder instructions are analyzed. The instruction set is defined so that the existing ladder program can be reused with simple translation. Because bit instructions controls the behavior of word instructions, the processor suits for high level language like SFC. Simulations show that the PLC with the suggested processor is twenty times faster than the PLC with the multi-purpose microprocessor.