MicroJava-701

Philipp Baecker · Johannes Bungert · Andreas Gladisch · Christian Titze

Introduction

• The first microprocessor that executes Java bytecodes directly in hardware

• Some results suggest that MicroJava 701 will be twice as fast as a 266 MHz Pentium II system on Java code

• MicroJava 701 looks to be a dynamite bargain for customers determined to build Java-execution machines.

• What kind of machines might those be?

• The hypothetical Java-based network computer has been slow to appear, perhaps because Java applications are not thick on the ground.

Introduction

• Without plentiful Java apps, Java systems are superfluous, without the Java-system, the apps may not come.

• The 701 looks better the more bytecode the system has to run.

• For an all bytecode-system, the 701 is probably faster and cheaper than anything else.

• MicroJava 701 makes sense for some small fraction of the market (that does not now exist) that mainly relies on Java code and does not already have a microprocessor in it.

Introduction

• Java hardware, software, education, and advertising are sun’s featured products.

• Sun is more interested in Java itself than in Java chips specifically.

• So, Java chips are a complement, not a replacement for software only Java environments.

Features

• picoJava-II Performance Java architecture

• Operating Frequency of 133 to 200 MHz

• Maximum Power Consumption of 4 W

• 0.25 micron CMOS technology.

• 64 × 32-bit Stack Cache

• 16 Kbyte direct-mapped Instruction cache

• 16 Kbyte, two-way set-associative Data cache

• 32-bit Integrated Floating-Point Unit

• Support for big- and little-endian data byte ordering

• Interface to PCI Bus

Features

• Integrated memory controller

• Programmable I/O

• Ten External Interrupts

• Power management

• Local Bus for low cost peripheral expansion, connection to 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit slave devices (e. g. a boot PROM)

• Interrupt Controller and multiple timers (programmability of interrupt priorities).

• 2.5 V for the CPU core and 3.3 V for I/O

Memory Map

• The microJava-701 CPU permits the following memory regions to be placed anywhere within the CPU’s 1 GB of addressable address space:

– DRAM (both EDO and SDRAM)—four banks

– Local Bus—four banks

– PCI Memory/IO—three banks

• The fixed regions in the memory map are as follows:

– Registers

– Boot code selected by FLASH_CS#—only the starting address is fixed (the Region’s size can be programmed)

Memory Map

Cacheability (MB) Starting Address (Hex) Region Size Region3001.0000 256M-64KB available3000.8000 32KB SDRAM MRS3000.2400 23KB Reserved3000.2000 1KB PCI Bus Registers for PCI

Bus Configuration3000.1C00 1KB PCI Bus Registers for PCI

Bus Feature Control3000.1800 1KB Timer, Clock Control, and

System Information Regis-ters

3000.1400 1KB Reserved3000.1000 1KB Reserved3000.0C00 1KB Interrupt Controller Regis-

ters3000.0800 1KB Reserved3000.0400 1KB Memory Controller Regis-

ters

Noncacheable (256MB)

3000.0000 1KB PCI Bus Registers for PCIHost Mode Configuration

0200.0000 736MB (min) availableCacheable (768MB)0 32MB (max) Boot FLASH_CS#

microJava-701 Block Diagram

Netcomputer Block Diagram

Integer Unit (IU)

• Java integer instructions

– defined in the Java Virtual Machine Specification

– extended picoJava-II specific instructions

• 64-word (32-bit) stack cache

• Executes prefetched instructions using a six-stage pipeline

• Supports instructions such as shift, integer multiply, integer divide and stack manipulation.

• Little-endian and big-endian data representation.

• Up to four instructions can be folded together and executed in parallel.

Floating Point Unit (FPU)

• The FPU executes all single-precision and double-precision floating-point instructions as defined in the Java

• Virtual Machine Specification.

• Has its own

– microcode sequencer

– Floating point adder

– Floating-point multiplier/divider.

• float and double represent single-precision 32-bit and double-precision 64- bit format IEEE 754 values as specified in IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic

Floating Point Unit (FPU)

• float and double

– Positive and negative sign-magnitude numbers

– Positive and negative zeroes

– Positive and negative infinities

– Special Not-a-Number (NaN) value

• Finite nonzero values of type float: s xfa m xfa 2e, where

– s is +1 or –1,

– m is a positive integer less than 224,

– e is an integer between –149 and 104,

• Smallest positive nonzero value:1.40239846e–45F

• Largest positive nonzero value: 3.40282347e+38F

Floating Point Unit (FPU)

• Finite nonzero values of type float: s xfa m xfa 2e, where

– s is +1 or 1,

– m is a positive integer less than 224,

– e is an integer between 149 and 104,

• Smallest positive nonzero value:4.94065645841246544e– 324

• Largest positive nonzero value: 1.79769313486231570e+308

• Floating-point values are ordered

• NaN is unordered

Cache

• Instruction Cache

– 16kByte in size

– Direct mapped cache organized as 1024 lines × 16Byte.

– Instruction cache line fill done four 32-bit words at a time.

• Data Cache

– 16kByte in size.

– Each set is 512 lines × 16Byte.

– Data cache line fill done four 32-bit words at a time.

DRAM Memory Interface

• Complete EDO DRAM and SDRAM controller generates all signals necessary to support from 1 MByte to 256 MBytes of EDO DRAM or SDRAM.

• EDO DRAM at speeds of 70ns, 60ns, and 50ns.• SDRAM at frequencies of either 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 the CPU

clock rate (e.g., at 100 MHz, 66 MHz, or 50 MHz for a 200 MHz CPU).

• DRAM devices must be of the same technology and speed grade.

• 32-bit and 64-bit DRAM devices• DRAM system is organized as four banks, varying from 4

MBytes to 64 MBytes in size.

Flash Memory Interface

• Local bus interface suitable for attaching– Flash memory boot PROM– Super I/O controller– Other slave I/O devices with timings similar

to Flash memory.• Five banks provided for local bus connections• One bank dedicated for Flash memory that has

a fixed starting address 0 to be used for the boot program.

• 64KByte to 1GByte of Flash memory.• Data bus width of 8-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit

Interrupt Controller

• 15 interrupt levels and one nonmaskable interrupt (NMI)

• NMI, six external interrupts, EXT_INTR[5:0], and four low level interrupts, LL_INTR#[3:0] made available for general purpose use.

• Four sources of internally generated interrupts:

– tick timer,

– general purpose timer,

– watchdog timer

– PCI error.

• Two software interrupts.

• An interrupt source can be mapped to any of 15 levels.

Interrupt Controller

• Level-triggered interrupts triggered with a low logic level

• Edge-triggered interrupts triggered on rising edges.

• Edge-triggered interrupts cleared by writing a one to the bit position in the Pending Register (PEND_INT) to be cleared.

• After an edge-triggered interrupt has been pro-cessed, its pending bit must be cleared before another trigger event can be sensed.

• Trigger type of external interrupts, EXT_INTR[5:0], are programmable, while low level trigger interrupts, LL_INTR#[3:0], are always triggered with a low level and are normally used for PCI bus interrupts.

BER: Bank Enable Register

DADR: DRAM Access Decode Register

DADAR: DRAM Access Decode Alias Register

DRAM Bank Aliasing

Memory Aliasing Example

Missing Handbook?

• Programmer’s Reference Manual picoJava-II processor core will not be available before 1999

• But: microJava-701 is hardware implementation of JVM (Java Virtual Machine) plus extensions (absolute addressing!)

• JVM instruction set uses opcodes and mnemonics also used by the silicone chip

Instruction Set

• Instructions identified by one-byte opcode

• More complex operations have to be emulated• Example of the inner loop of the Virtual Machine:

do { fetch an opcode; if (operands) fetch operands; execute the action for the opcode;} while (there is more to do);

Load and Store Instructions

• Load and store instructions transfer values between the Virtual Machine’s local variables and operand stack:

iload, iload_<n>, lload, lload_<n>fload, fload_<n>, dload, dload_<n>aload, aload_<n>

Arithmetic Instructions

• Two types:

– integer value processing

– floating point value processing

• No support of byte, short, and char types

Arithmetic Instruction Set

• Add: iadd, ladd, fadd, dadd.

• Subtract: isub, lsub, fsub, dsub.

• Multiply: imul, lmul, fmul, dmul.

• Divide: idiv, ldiv, fdiv, ddiv.

• Remainder: irem, lrem, frem, drem.

• Negate: ineg, lneg, fneg, dneg.

• Shift: ishl, ishr, iushr, lshl, lshr, lushr.

• Bitwise OR: ior, lor.

• Bitwise AND: iand, land.

• Bitwise exclusive OR: ixor, lxor.

• Local variable increment: iinc.

Type Conversion Instructions

Support: int to long, float, or double long to float or double float to double

Instruction Set Example

Instruction: swap Operation: Swap top two operand stack words Forms: swap = 95 (0x5f) Stack: … , word2, word1 > …, word1, word2

Description: The top two words on the operand stack are swapped

Perfomance and Speed

• 85% of Java Bytecode processed in hardware

• Frequently occurring Sequences replaced

• Innovative Hardware Stack

• Accelerated Stack Management

Innovative Hardware Stack

• Top 64 entries on the stack contained within picoJava on-chip stack cache

• Java programs invoke methods

• Streamlining method invocation substantially improves the performance of Java code

• Overlap between the methods allows direct parameter passing without copying

Accelerated Stack Management

• Access usually limited to the top portion of the stack

• Random, single-cycle access to the stack: FOLDING

– moving data to top variable and consuming that data “folded” into one operation.

Processor Speed