Application-specific instruction set processor

An Application Specific Instruction-Set Processor (ASIP) is a component used in System-on-a-Chip design. The instruction set of an ASIP is tailored to benefit a specific application. This specialization of the core provides a tradeoff between the flexibility of a general purpose CPU and the performance of an ASIC.

Some ASIPs have a configurable instruction set. Usually, these cores are divided into two parts: static logic which defines a minimum ISA and configurable logic which can be used to design new instructions. The configurable logic can be programmed either in the "field" in a similar fashion to FPGA or during the chip synthesis.

References

• Cong, J. and Fan, Y. and Han, G. and Zhang, Z. (2004). "Application-specific instruction generation for configurable processor architectures". International Symposium on Field Programmable Gate Arrays. ACM Press New York, NY, USA: 183–189.
• Wirthlin, M.J. and Hutchings, B.L. (1995). "A Dynamic Instruction Set Computer". IEEE Symposium on FPGAs for Custom Computing Machines. IEEE Computer Society Press: 99–107.
• M. Jain and M. Balakrishnan and A. Kumar (2001). "ASIP Design Methodologies : Survey and Issues". Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on VLSI Design. IEEE: 76–81.
• Zebo Peng. "Application Specific Instruction Set Processor Architecture".