CSC/ECE 506 Fall 2007/wiki1 4 a1

Architectural Trends

VLIW(Very Long Instruction Word)

one VLIW instruction encodes multiple operations; specifically, one instruction encodes at least one operation for each execution unit of the device. For example, if a VLIW device has five execution units, then a VLIW instruction for that device would have five operation fields, each field specifying what operation should be done on that corresponding execution unit. To accommodate these operation fields, VLIW instructions are usually at least 64 bits in width, and on some architectures are much wider.