Low-power SoC's MIPS CPU balances size & performance

Baikal selected the MIPS CPU because of its balance of high-performance processing with small silicon area and excellent low power credentials.

The MIPS P5600 CPU is based on a wide issue, deeply out-of-order implementation of the MIPS32 architecture, supporting up to six cores in a single cluster with high performance cache coherency. It achieves the industry’s leading CoreMark/MHz score per core for licensable CPU IP. The OmniShield-ready P5600 also integrates hardware virtualisation for increased security and reliability, and 128-bit SIMD support for high performance on data parallel operations such as DSP, imaging and media.

Baikal-T1 SoC architecture block diagram

Commenting on the Baikal-T1, Grigoriy Khrenov, CTO, Baikal Electronics, notes: “We are glad to present the world’s first publicly announced implementation of the latest MIPS Warrior P5600 CPU. With the P5600 we created a high-performance, highly efficient communications SoC with a wide range of modern high-speed interfaces. Another valuable feature is the possibility to design passive cooling solutions. The technical specifications of the Baikal-T1 enable our clients to develop highly competitive products targeting various markets including wireless routers and home gateways.”

Tony King-Smith, Executive Vice President of Marketing, Imagination Technologies, says: “We are delighted that Baikal is bringing this processor to market based on our latest MIPS Warrior P5600 CPU. This is one of many recent milestones for MIPS that show that Imagination is bringing MIPS back in a big way. MIPS CPUs offer an unparalleled range of features and performance points, and innovative companies like Baikal are taking advantage of these benefits to create differentiated designs.”

Svetlana Legostaeva, CEO, Baikal Electronics, added: “The widely used MIPS architecture enables the Baikal-T1 to take its place in a vast environment that has been developing for more than 30 years and has a great growing opportunity for communications solutions in Russian and global markets. Our MIPS-based communications processor, with its versatility, high-performance and energy efficiency, will rival the industry’s most advanced 32-bit communications chips. Commercial solutions based on the Baikal-T1 are expected in the market at the end of 2015.”

Engineering samples of Baikal-T1 are available to developers now from Baikal. The SoC comes with a set of extensible software based on open source code.