Diamond Standard 233L

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An Efficient Controller Optimized for Linux

Contents: Features Benefits Description Frequency, area and power specs

Features

• High performance with minimial die area, low power
• Linux-compatible Memory Management Unit
• 5-stage pipeline
• Dhrystone 2.1: 1.38 DMIPS/MHz
• 24/16-bit ISA with modeless switching
• Iterative 32x32 multiplier and 32-bit integer divider
• Single cycle 16x16-bit MAC
• 16-bit DSP instructions
• 16Kbyte, 4-way set associative instruction and data caches
• Integrated interrupt controller with 22 interrupts at 6 priority levels
• Three integrated timers
• On-chip debugging hardware
• Embedded trace support
• Comprehensive software design environment
• AHB-lite and AXI bridges

Benefits

• Flexible memory architecture adaptable to an extremely wide range of applications
• Designed to support the Linux operating system
• High arithmetic and DSP performance, reducing need for separate DSP
• Fast and flexible interrupt handling
• High performance on general-purpose code
• No contention between instructions and data
• Drop into existing AMBA-based SOCs

NOTE: TEnsilica does not directly provide or support the Linux operating system. Linux is available from the open-source Linux for Xtensa project.

Flexible Mid-Range CPU with Linux OS Support

The Diamond Standard 233L is a high-performance, fully synthesizable 32-bit RISC core. It is area and power efficient with a local memory architecture that provides outstanding flexibility and performance, with a full-featured Memory Management Unit (MMU) for application processing using operating systems such as Linux. The caches are 16Kbyte instruction and data, 4-way set associative.

The MMU provides instruction and data Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLBs), which manage virtual-to-physical address mapping. In addition to address translation, the MMU provides four different privilege levels (for memory protection), variable page sizes and multiple access modes. Combining the MMU with a flexible interrupt architecture and high performance, the Diamond 233L can easily meet the needs of a complex system running numerous operations.

Since the Diamond 233L's target applications are controller related, interrupt options are extremely important. The Diamond 233L includes a non-maskable interrupt for critical system events and six levels of interrupts consisting of a combination of external, software and timing interrupts. This eases the development of software interrupt handlers and external interrupt priority hardware design.

Arithmetic and DSP hardware support reduces the need to include a separate DSP in the system design. DSP support consists of a single-cycle 16x16 MAC unit adding four dedicated 32-bit registers and a 40-bit accumulator. Additionally, there is support for zero overhead looping, clamps (saturating arithmetic), max/min value, normalize, and sign extend. Arithmetic support is provided by a built-in 32x32 multiplier and 32-bit integer divider.

Get the 2-page Diamond Standard 233L product brief.

Read EETimes article about debugging a Linux device driver running on a Diamond 232L.

Block Diagram

Diamond Standard 233L Controller