Processor architecture and data buffering

A set of architectures from three major architecture families: stack, register, and memory-to-memory is discussed. It is shown that scalable architectures are not applicable for low-density technologies because they require at least 32 words of local memory. Software support is shown to be capable of bridging the performance gap between scalable and nonscalable architectures. A register architecture with 32 words of local memory allocated interprocedurally outperforms scalable architectures with equal sizes local memories and even some with larger size local memories. The performance advantage of unscalable architectures becomes significant when in addition to quality compile-time support, a small cache is added to an unscalable architecture. A 32-register architecture with 512 byte cache executes 20 percent less cycles when compared with an 8-set multiple overlapping set organization.