View Full Version : How many transistors does a execution unit have?
How many transistors does a ALU or a execution unit have?
ShaidarHaran
06-Jul-2008, 18:15
Varies between micro-architectures. Pick a chip and you might get an answer (I say might because this data isn't generally supplied by microprocessor manufacturers).
Simon F
07-Jul-2008, 09:00
How many transistors does a ALU or a execution unit have?
Just as an aside, that figure is probably not calculated by HW devs anyway. I suspect that they might only have figures such as "it is X square microns in a Y nm process targeted at Z MHz".
RussSchultz
07-Jul-2008, 20:25
Another answer (in terms of gates, or nand equivalents) would be to shop around different IP vendors and look at their datasheets:
www.design-reuse.com is one place
www.cast-inc.com sells IP and I think they have an ALU (or a slice or something like that).
There's a ton of vendors out there with available datasheets on different blocks. Google is your friend.
Of course, it all depends on what the ALU is supposed to be doing, and the constraints you put on it (like single cycle multiply or divide, etc), so if you're trying to come up with some analogy on CELL or a GPU or whatnot, you're probably not going to get enough information to make any rational comparisons.
At 65nm
SOI, CMOS
ARM or PPC architecture
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