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Denver µarch
General Info
Arch Type	CPU
Designer	Nvidia
Manufacturer	TSMC >
Introduction	2014
Process	28 nm
Core Configs	2
Pipeline
Type	Superscalar
OoOE	No
Decode	2-way
Instructions
ISA	ARMv8
Cache
L1I Cache	128 KiB/core 4-way set associative
L1D Cache	64 KiB/core 4-way set associative
L2 Cache	2 MiB/core 16-way set associative

Denver is a CPU microarchitecture from Nvidia introduced in 2014, capable of executing ARMv8 code natively and with help of dynamic code optimization. Native ARM decoder can issue up to 2 instructions per cycle, and up to 7 micro-operations are started per cycle when dynamic code translation is used.

Architecture

Denver is 7-wide superscalar. It has ARMv8 hardware decoder which can generate up to 2 micro-ops per cycle. Also it can execute up to 7 micro-ops per-cycle directly from L1i cache. Denver has 7 execution units: 1 branch, 2 integer (1 has hardware multiply module), 2 FP/NEON (128-bit), 2 Load/Store units.

Pipeline of Denver 1 has 15 stages, mispredict penalty is 13 cycles.

Stage name:

IP1

IC2

IW3

IN4

IN5

SB1

SB2

EB0

EB1

EA2

ED3

EL4

EE5

ES6

EW7

Stage action:

ITLB

I$ Rd

Way Sel

Dec

PB

Pick

Sch

RF Rd

Bypass

-

-

Bypass

ALU

-

RF wr

Dynamic Code Optimization

For often executed code optimization micro-interrupt can be generated and firmware-based optimizer is started. Using "Dynamic Profile Information" optimizer can translate ARMv8 instructions into optimized microcode sequence and save it into Optimization Cache. Then Denver will execute code directly from Optimization Cache without using hardware ARMv8 decoder. Several microcode sequences may be chained

In 2014 Nvidia listed several optimizations for the dynamic code translation:

• Unrolls Loops
• Renames registers
• Reorders Loads and Stores
• Improves control flow
• Removes unused computation
• Hoists redundant computation
• Sinks uncommonly executed computation
• Improves scheduling

Products

Denver is used in Nvidia's Tegra K1-64 (2014, 28 nm)

Denver 2 is used in Nvidia's Terga Parker (2016, 16 nm TSMC). Parker SoC also uses 4 Cortex-A57 cores.

All Denver Chips

	List of all Denver Chips
	Main processor										IGP
Model	Launched	Designer	Family	Process	Core	C	T	L2$	L3$	Frequency	Max Mem	Designer	Name	Frequency
Count: 0

References

• NVIDIA’S FIRST CPU IS A WINNER. Denver Uses Dynamic Translation to Outperform Mobile Rivals. - Linley Gwennap (August 18, 2014)
• IEEE HotChips 26 (HC26), 2014 - Darrell Boggs "Nvidia's Denver Processor"
• https://www.anandtech.com/tag/project-denver