TriMedia TM-1000
Program m able Media Processor
The TriMedia™ TM-1000 is a general-purpose microprocessor for
real-time processing of audio, video, graphics, and communications
datastreams. In a single chip, TM-1000 combines an ultra-high
performance, low cost CPU with a full complement of I/O and
coprocessing peripheral units.
In consumer electronics appliances and personal computing prod-
ucts, the TM-1000 media processor performs multimedia functions
with the advantages of special-purpose, embedded DSP solutions —
low cost and single-chip packaging — and the programmability of
general-purpose CPUs. It improves time-to-market through high-
level C/C++ language programmability and delivers throughput of
up to four billion operations per second.
MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIO NS
TM-1000 is an ideal building block for any multimedia application
that requires processing of video, audio, graphics, and communica-
tions datastreams. It is well suited for applications ranging from
single-purpose systems such as videophones, to reprogrammable,
multipurpose devices such as set-top boxes or web browsers.
TM-1000 easily implements popular multimedia standards such as
MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, but its orientation around a powerful, pro-
grammable general-purpose CPU makes it capable of a variety of
multimedia algorithms, whether open or proprietary.
FEATURES
+ Processes audio, video, graphics, and communications
datastreams on a single chip
+ Powerful, fine-grain parallel, 100 MHzVLIW CPU with
HARNESSING THE POW ER O F VLIW
separate instruction and data caches
TM-1000 delivers top performance through its elegant implementa-
tion of a fine-grain parallel architecture known as very-long instruc-
tion word, or VLIW. Unique to the TriMedia processor’s VLIW
implementation, parallelism is optimized at compile time by the
TriMedia compilation system. No specialized scheduling hardware is
required to parallelize code during execution. Hardware saved by
eliminating complex scheduling logic reduces cost and allows the
integration of multimedia-specific features.
+ Independent, DMA-driven multimedia I/O units to
format data and multimedia coprocessors to offload
the TriMedia CPU of specific multimedia algorithms
+ High-performance bus and memory system to manage
communication between TriMedia processing units
+ Instruction set includes RISC, multimedia, SIMD-type
With the capacity to pack multiple operations into one VLIW
instruction and 27 functional units in which to process them,
TM-1000 can execute up to five operations in parallel with each
clock cycle. Such parallel processing is an ideal complement to the
inherently parallel nature of multimedia applications.
DSP, and IEEE-compliant floating point operations
+ Robust software development tools and libraries that
enable multimedia application development entirely in
C/C++ programming languages
Another key contributor to TM-1000’s top performance is its use of
conditional execution. During program creation, an instruction
scheduler adds conditional code to each operation to enable guarded
execution — a technique that increases fine-grain parallelism and
significantly decreases code branching and execution time.
+ Configurable for standalone and plug-in card applica-
tions in consumer electronics and PC products