Reinventing Code Compression: Uncompromised Performance and Minimum System Cost with microMIPS Instruction Set Architecture

The transition to digital representation of all media—music, photos, video—has completely transformed the home. Where we once had analog TV tuners and CD-centric music systems, we now have digital set-top boxes, media players that stream Internet content, and home network gear that would only have been used in the enterprise a few years ago. Engineering teams designing connected devices face an incredibly tough balancing act in achieving high performance with low cost. They need at the core of their product a media-capable microprocessor that is architected for low system cost. This paper provides an in-depth technical examination of the new microMIPS instruction set architecture that delivers uncompromised 32-bit performance with the code size of a 16-bit device—minimizing system memory and therefore, cost.