Nios II Classic Processor Reference Guide

ID 683620
Date 10/28/2016
Public
Document Table of Contents

5.4.5. Instruction Performance

The Nios II/e core dispatches a single instruction at a time, and the processor waits for an instruction to complete before fetching and dispatching the next instruction. Because each instruction completes before the next instruction is dispatched, branch prediction is not necessary. This greatly simplifies the consideration of processor stalls. Maximum performance is one instruction per six clock cycles. To achieve six cycles, the Avalon® -MM instruction master port must fetch an instruction in one clock cycle. A stall on the Avalon® -MM instruction master port directly extends the execution time of the instruction.

Table 79.  Instruction Execution Performance for Nios II/e Core
Instruction Cycles
Normal ALU instructions (e.g., add, cmplt) 6
All branch, jmp, jmpi, ret, call, callr 6
trap, break, eret, bret,flushp, wrctl, rdctl,unimplemented 6
All load word 6 + Duration of Avalon® -MM read transfer
All load halfword 9 + Duration of Avalon® -MM read transfer
All load byte 10 + Duration of Avalon® -MM read transfer
All store 6 + Duration of Avalon® -MM write transfer
All shift, all rotate 7 to 38
All other instructions 6
Combinatorial custom instructions 6
Multicycle custom instructions 6