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Rather than designing custom hardware blocks for every function in the
communication system, the Sandblaster® is implemented as a compact
and power-efficient core, and is replicated to provide a system-on-chip
platform tailored for wireless devices. This approach scales well with
successive generations of silicon process technology and provides optimum
efficiency and programmability.
Additionally, Sandbridge uses its software development environment to
assist the handset OEM in creating system-level solutions for communications
devices.
To address stringent timing constraints, multithreading is an elegant
method of servicing events within specified latencies. Uni-processors
on the other hand, particularly non-interlocked (i.e. non-transparent)
processors, may have significant challenges meeting real-time constraints
due to non-interruptible execution sequences. The Sandblaster® approach
allows for any thread to be interrupted on an instruction boundary without
side effects (i.e. transparent execution). Additionally, any thread can
be dynamically programmed to handle an array of interrupt driven events.
The result from this approach is a profoundly more efficient development cycle. Rather than the painful 'wait-and-see' experience of sending custom silicon off to fab, the evaluation cycle is the traditional edit-compile- execute - debug cycle that allows for a more iterative approach to achieving results, tuning for performance, and innovating the latest releases of protocol specifications.
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