Next Generation AEMB Development

A new AEMB core is in the works. It will feature a radical departure from the present compatible architecture, while maintaining software compatibility. It has twice the clock rate of the present core and can execute two hardware threads. There are also other improvements made to the core. Initial results have been extremely promising, delivering a doubling in code performance.

After the development of the AEMB 7.11 got wrapped up, there were many ideas floating around, on things to improve. These ideas are mainly driven by user feedback. So, the plan is to build a next generation AEMB, which will feature a departure from the traditional architecture, while maintaining full software compatibility.

Chiefly, the improvements to look out for in the new core are:

• Increased Clock Speeds
  The new AEMB will feature a 5-stage integer pipeline. The shortening of each individual stage results in the doubling of the effective clock rate, over the present clock rate. Many of the issues that were slowing it down previously, have been resolved. So, you can expect the new core to run at twice the clock speed of the present AEMB.
• Fine Grain Multi Threading
  Another radical departure for the core is the implementation of FGMT, which is capable of executing 2 hardware threads. This will reduce latency and increase instruction throughput. Instructions are no longer wasted when dealing with code bottlenecks and slow devices, which makes is suitable for high performance embedded applications

Besides these two main changes, there are many other improvements being done on the architecture. As a result of all the improvements, code performance can be expected to increase by 2.5 times. There are many potential exciting applications that can be built for this new core. Hopefully, this will keep the AEMB useful and exciting for various embedded projects.

An initial development version is now available in CVS. It is potentially buggy and the architecture has not been finalised. It should only be used for evaluating the potential of the new core. It is not yet recommended for production use until further testing is complete.