VLSI ORIENTED COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE AND SOME APPLICATIONS

Abstract

The paper surveys the particular problems, arising in the architectural design of computing systems, realized on VLSI chips. Particular difficulties due to limited on-chip density and power dissipation are discussed. The difficulties of the realization of on-chip communications between various subsystems (between themselves and between other offchip systems) are stressed. A number of design principles for the realization of on-chip communication paths is presented. Two design philosophies for the instruction set design in a VLSI environment are brought up: (a) The large microcoded instruction set, (b) The Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) approach, based on the Streamlined Instruction Set Design. A survey of the author’s research group work in this area is presented. This includes the ZT-1 single chip microcomputer, RISC computing space studies, applications to a distributed traffic control and a la rge scale, reconfigurable communications system.