Initial results on the performance and cost of vector microprocessors
Corinna G. Lee, Derek J. DeVries · 1997
Increasingly wider superscalar processors are experiencing diminishing performance returns while requiring larger portions of die area dedicated to control rather than datapath. As an alternative to using these processors to exploit parallelism effectively, we are investigating the viability of using single-chip vector microprocessors. This paper presents some initial results of our investigation where we compare the performance and cost of vector microprocessors to that of aggressive, out-of-order superscalar microprocessors. On the performance side, we show that vector processors are able to execute a highly parallel, integer-based application 1.5-7.3 times faster than superscalar processors can by exploiting parallelism more effectively. This ability stems from the use of vector instructions. Vector instructions exploit parallelism across loop iterations by implicitly re-scheduling operations and temporally localizing the parallelism. Vector instructions also reduce instruction bandw...