Overlapped loop support in the Cydra 5

Abstract

The CydraTM 5 architecture adds unique support for overlapping successive iterations of a loop to a very long instruction word (VLIW) base. This architecture allows highly parallel loop execution for a much larger class of loops than can be vectorized, without requiring the unrolling of loops usually used by compilers for VLIW machines. This paper discusses the Cydra 5 loop scheduling model, the special architectural features which support it, and the loop compilation techniques used to take full advantage of the architecture.