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Concept
No instruction set computing
Summary
No instruction set computing (NISC) is a computing architecture and compiler technology for designing highly efficient custom processors and hardware accelerators by allowing a compiler to have low-level control of hardware resources.
NISC is a statically scheduled horizontal nanocoded architecture (SSHNA). The term "statically scheduled" means that the operation scheduling and Hazard handling are done by a compiler. The term "horizontal nanocoded" means that NISC does not have any predefined instruction set or microcode. The compiler generates nanocodes which directly control functional units, registers and multiplexers of a given datapath. Giving low-level control to the compiler enables better utilization of datapath resources, which ultimately result in better performance. The benefits of NISC technology are:
Simpler controller: no hardware scheduler, no instruction decoder
Better performance: more flexible architecture, better resource utilization
Easier to design: no need for designing instruction-sets
The instruction set and controller of processors are the most tedious and time-consuming parts to design. By eliminating these two, design of custom processing elements become significantly easier.
Furthermore, the datapath of NISC processors can even be generated automatically for a given application. Therefore, designer's productivity is improved significantly.
Since NISC datapaths are very efficient and can be generated automatically, NISC technology is comparable to high level synthesis (HLS) or C to HDL synthesis approaches. In fact, one of the benefits of this architecture style is its capability to bridge these two technologies (custom processor design and HLS).
In computer science, zero instruction set computer (ZISC) refers to a computer architecture based solely on pattern matching and absence of (micro-)instructions in the classical sense. These chips are known for being thought of as comparable to the neural networks, being marketed for the number of "synapses" and "neurons".
Official source
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