Get yourself a new set of threads

Multithreaded processors improves the benefit of increased system performance in designs such as set-top boxes without increasing chip cost and also provides greater flexibility for partitioning hardware and software. High-performance single threaded processors stalls for 50, 100 or more cycles when an instruction or data cache miss is encountered, waiting for the data to be supplied from the main memory. The multithreaded processors can fill all of these stall cycles from both short and long-term effects with useful instructions from other threads, as they can switch between multiple threads on a cycle-by-cycle basis. In a multi-threaded system, when one thread stalls, the processor can execute instructions from another thread. The priority of these threads can be varied as needed to provide the required real-time performance, as these thread priority can be set through the use of standard operating system mechanisms or, in the case of the MIPS 34K processor core, through the use of hardware QoS support.