Abstract
A heterogeneous processor architecture and a method of booting a heterogeneous processor is described. A processor according to one embodiment comprises: a set of large physical processor cores; a set of small physical processor cores having relatively lower performance processing capabilities and relatively lower power usage relative to the large physical processor cores; and a package unit, to enable a bootstrap processor. The bootstrap processor initializes the homogeneous physical processor cores, while the heterogeneous processor presents the appearance of a homogeneous processor to a system firmware interface.
Inventors
- Elierzer Weissmann
- Rinat Rappoport
- Michael Mishaeli
- Hisham Shafi
- Oron Lenz
- Jason W. Brandt
- Stephen A. Fischer
- Bret L. Toll
- Inder M. Sodhi
- Alon Naveh
- Ganapati N. Srinivasa
- Ashish V. Choubal
- Scott D. Hahn
- David A. Koufaty
- Russel J. Fenger
- Gaurav Khanna
- Eugene Gorbatov
- Mishali Naik
- Andrew J. Herdrich
- Abirami Prabhakaran
- Sanjeev S. Sahagirdar
- Paul Brett
- Paolo Narvaez
- Andrew D. Henroid
- Dheeraj R. Subbareddy