MTPA: A processor architecture for MP-SOCs employing the moving threads paradigm

Moving threads is a new kind of approach for mapping the computation of an application to multiprocessor system on chip (MP-SOC) architecture. Instead of moving data read and write requests, extremely lightweight threads are moved between the processor cores. As a consequence, all kinds of cache coherence problems and need for read reply messages are eliminated. Lamport's sequential consistency of shared memory multiprocessor systems is achieved for free. Flexible and efficient handling of varying number of threads is included in the architecture. In this paper we propose a processor architecture (MTPA) for the moving threads paradigm. We describe the overall structure, operation, instruction set, and thread management mechanism as well as evaluate the proposed architecture with different functional unit settings with simulations and give early silicon area and power consumption estimates.