System considerations in the NS32032 design

ABSTRACT

The key element in the high-performance systems toward which the 32-bit microprocessors are targeted is the memory and its buses. Viewing memory rather than the CPU as the key system element leads to an important rule for CPU designers: don't hog the bus. The NS32032 avoids hogging the bus by increasing the information content of memory transactions, and by keeping key data where it's needed rather than moving it across the bus each time it's used. The information content of transactions is increased through the use of a wide bus and a compact instruction encoding. Key data is kept in registers and in an MMU translation lookaside buffer.