A 45nm 1.3GHz 16.7 double-precision GFLOPS/W RISC-V processor with vector accelerators

Abstract

A 64-bit dual-core RISC-V processor with vector accelerators has been fabricated in a 45nm SOI process. This is the first dual-core processor to implement the open-source RISC-V ISA designed at the University of California, Berkeley. In a standard 40nm process, the RISC-V scalar core scores 10% higher in DMIPS/MHz than the Cortex-A5, ARM's comparable single-issue in-order scalar core, and is 49% more area-efficient. To demonstrate the extensibility of the RISC-V ISA, we integrate a custom vector accelerator alongside each single-issue in-order scalar core. The vector accelerator is 1.8× more energy-efficient than the IBM Blue Gene/Q processor, and 2.6× more than the IBM Cell processor, both fabricated in the same process. The dual-core RISC-V processor achieves maximum clock frequency of 1.3GHz at 1.2V and peak energy efficiency of 16.7 double-precision GFLOPS/W at 0.65V with an area of 3mm2.