VIEWS: 3 PAGES: 13 CATEGORY: Electronics POSTED ON: 7/3/2010
BACKGROUND OF THE PRESENT INVENTIONThe present invention relates to integrated circuit packaging of computer systems and more particularly to structures that allow some flexibility in computer architectures so that program and command word-lengths can be easily adjusted.Central processing units (CPUs) are conventionally comprised of a basic control unit, an arithmetic logic unit (ALU), and several general/special purpose registers. All of which elements are now routinely integrated on a single monolithicsemiconductor substrate as a direct result of advancements in semiconductor processing technology. The control unit, ALU, and registers are usually interconnected by various proprietary kinds of intra-chip buses (sometimes called micro-buses). Programcommands and I/O data flow over these buses. The internal connections between the elements dramatically reduce the number of external connections that would otherwise be necessary. Quality and reliability experts have a rule-of-thumb that says areduction in the number of external pins and their PC board connections will be directly reflected in an improvement in a system's reliability. Individual device reliability is often computed on the basis of how many pins the IC's in a system have. Buthigh levels of integration reduce the flexibility a system designer has with customizing the architecture for particular applications. Since the interconnects are on-chip, they are not accessible to board and systems designers. So these engineers arestuck with whatever the chip designer decided to offer as a general compromise between conflicting applications that were envisioned at the time the chip was specified.Each section and interconnect of a monolithic semiconductor CPU, quite naturally, has a fixed composition. Each CPU must therefore have a standardized fixed command (instruction) set. But non-monolithic implementations, even though they allowrelatively mixing and matching each of the elements of a central process
"Integrated Circuit Package For Flexible Computer System Alternative Architectures - Patent 5376825"