FLOVA: A four-issue VLIW geometry processor with SIMD instructions and lighting acceleration unit

Abstract

This paper describes a VLIW (very long instruction word) geometry processor called FLOVA (FLOating-Point VLIW Architecture) which was developed to accelerate the geometry stage of 3D graphics. FLOVA executes four instructions in one cycle and supports 136 instructions including 35 SIMD (single instruction multiple data) instructions to accelerate the geometry stage. Special features to accelerate transformation and lighting operations in 3D graphics geometry stage are described. FLOVA can calculate the power value of two floating-point numbers in only four clock cycles with a negligible loss of accuracy, compared to over 150 clock cycles in other processors.