Andes Custom Extension™ (ACE) Supports AndesCore™ 45-Series Processors to Provide Flexible Acceleration

HSINCHU, TAIWAN — March 23, 2023 — Andes Technology, a leading supplier of high-performance, low-power, and extensible 32/64-bit RISC-V processor cores and Founding Premier member of RISC-V International, announces that an updated version of the powerful Andes Custom Extension™ (ACE) technology now supports the AndesCore™ 45-series processors – the single-core N45/D45/NX45/A45/AX45 and the multi-core A45MP/AX45MP. In addition, the advanced ACE features ACE-RVV and Andes Streaming Port will work with the AndesCore™ AX45MPV, which is the latest member of the 45-series processors with up to 1024-bit Vector Processing Unit (VPU).

With an in-order, 8-stage, dual-issue superscalar pipeline, the AndesCore™ 45-series processors offer strong processing performance for companies to develop high-performance solutions for a wide range of applications in 5G, automotive, AIoT etc. Similar to the AndesCore™ 25 and 27-series processors, the 45-series processors now work with the Andes Custom Extension™ (ACE) to realize domain-specific architecture designs with custom instructions support.

Through the ACE framework, SoC designers are able to design custom instructions and the corresponding custom logic to extend the AndesCore™ processors. The Andes COPILOT is a set of powerful tools to generate all the necessary components including intrinsic functions, processor RTL module and support for simulator, debugger, and compilation tools to support the custom instructions. The designers write an ACE script to describe the instruction semantics and concise Verilog RTL code to describe the custom logic. These are then fed into the COPILOT to generate all the outputs.

The new version COPILOT v6 provides designers access to enhanced features of ACE such as ACE pipelining, background processing, and grouping functions. In the pipelined ACE engine, many ACE instructions are processed in different stages simultaneously. One instruction can complete every cycle when there is no dependence on resources and data. In this way, ACE pipelining offers a significant performance increase. Running ACE instructions in the background decouples their execution from the processor pipeline. This permits the processor pipeline to continue to execute younger instructions, including ACE instructions, without waiting for the completion of older ACE instructions. As a result, overall performance is improved, especially when there are long-latency ACE instructions. Grouping functions allows specifying one or multiple instructions as an instruction group, synchronization group, or a status group. ACE instructions in different instruction groups can be executed simultaneously to improve the overall ACE execution performance.

To further enhance the custom instructions design flexibility, the latest COPILOT has special support for SoC with embedded FPGA, where one or more 45-Series cores are hardened to connect via ACE interfaces to the embedded FPGA, which is ready for post-silicon custom extensions. COPILOT can generate clock domain crossing logic for the hardened part of the chip. The embedded FPGA architecture enables the capability of changing custom instructions for any purpose, such as fixing design issues or adding more innovative instructions.

“Introduction of AndesCore™ 45-series processors is a major milestone of Andes RISC-V processor development. This class of CPU brings best performance, power efficiency and rich features that our users will value,” said Dr. Charlie Su, President and CTO of Andes Technology. “The 45-series processors are great products in their own right and users can now use the latest ACE to bring a higher degree of customization in their designs.”

The new generation of Andes Custom Extension™ for AndesCore™ 45-series single-core N45/D45/NX45/A45/AX45 and multi-core A45MP/AX45MP is available now. To learn more about ACE’s powerful capabilities, please contact Andes Technology for more information.

About Andes Technology

Eighteen years in business and a Founding Premier member of RISC-V International, Andes is a publicly-listed company (TWSE: 6533; SIN: US03420C2089; ISIN: US03420C1099) and a leading supplier of high-performance/low-power 32/64-bit embedded processor IP solutions, and the driving force in taking RISC-V mainstream. Andes’ fifth-generation AndeStar™ architecture adopted the RISC-V as the base. Its V5 RISC-V CPU families range from tiny 32-bit cores to advanced 64-bit Out-of-Order processors with DSP, FPU, Vector, Linux, superscalar, and/or multi/many-core capabilities. The annual volume of Andes-Embedded SoCs has exceeded 3 billion in 2021 and continues to rise. By the end of 2022, the cumulative volume of Andes-Embedded™ SoCs has surpassed 12 billion. For more information, please visit https://www.andestech.com.