NDS32 is a new high-performance 32-bit RISC microprocessor core.
AndeStar is a patent-pending 16-bit/32-bit mixed-length instruction set to achieve optimal system performance, code density, and power efficiency.
- It contains the following features:
- Intermixable 32-bit and 16-bit instruction sets without the need for mode switch.
- 16-bit instructions as a frequently used subset of 32-bit instructions.
- RISC-style register-based instruction set.
- 32 32-bit General Purpose Registers (GPR).
- Upto 1024 User Special Registers (USR) for existing and extension instructions.
- Rich load/store instructions for...
- Single memory access with base address update.
- Multiple aligned and unaligned memory accesses for memory copy and stack operations.
- Data prefetch to improve data cache performance.
- Non-bus locking synchronization instructions.
- PC relative jump and PC read instructions for efficient position independent code.
- Multiply-add and multiple-sub with 64-bit accumulator.
- Instruction for efficient power management.
- Bi-endian support.
- Three instruction extension space for application acceleration:
- Performance extension.
- Andes future extensions (for floating-point, multimedia, etc.)
- Customer extensions.
Andes Technology has 4 families of CPU cores: N12, N10, N9, N8.
For details about N12 CPU family, please check below N1213 features. N1213 is a configurable hard/soft core of NDS32's N12 CPU family.
- CPU Core
- 16-/32-bit mixable instruction format.
- 32 general-purpose 32-bit registers.
- 8-stage pipeline.
- Dynamic branch prediction.
- 32/64/128/256 BTB.
- Return address stack (RAS).
- Vector interrupts for internal/external. interrupt controller with 6 hardware interrupt signals.
- 3 HW-level nested interruptions.
- User and super-user mode support.
- Memory-mapped I/O.
- Address space up to 4GB.
- Memory Management Unit
- TLB
- 4/8-entry fully associative iTLB/dTLB.
- 32/64/128-entry 4-way set-associati.ve main TLB.
- TLB locking support
- Optional hardware page table walker.
- Two groups of page size support.
- 4KB & 1MB.
- 8KB & 1MB.
- Memory Subsystem
- I & D cache.
- Virtually indexed and physically tagged.
- Cache size: 8KB/16KB/32KB/64KB.
- Cache line size: 16B/32B.
- Set associativity: 2-way, 4-way or direct-mapped.
- Cache locking support.
- I & D local memory (LM).
- Size: 4KB to 1MB.
- Bank numbers: 1 or 2.
- Optional 1D/2D DMA engine.
- Internal or external to CPU core.
- Bus Interface
- Synchronous/Asynchronous AHB bus: 0, 1 or 2 ports.
- Synchronous High speed memory port. (HSMP): 0, 1 or 2 ports.
- Debug
- JTAG debug interface.
- Embedded debug module (EDM).
- Optional embedded program tracer interface.
- Miscellaneous
- Programmable data endian control.
- Performance monitoring mechanism.
The NDS32 ports of u-boot, the Linux kernel, the GNU toolchain and other associated software are actively supported by Andes Technology Corporation.