Custom circuit design as a driver of microprocessor performance

Abstract

This paper presents a survey of some of the most aggressive custom designs for CMOS processor products and prototypes in IBM. We argue that microprocessor performance growth, which has traditionally been driven primarily by CMOS technology and microarchitectural improvements, can receive a substantial contribution from improvements in circuit design and physical organization. We predict that in future microprocessor designs the floorplan and wire plan will be as important as the microarchitecture, more control logic will be structured and become indistinguishable from dataflow elements, and more circuits will be designed and analyzed at the level of single transistors and wires.