| Designer | Qualcomm |
|---|---|
| Bits | 32-bit, 64-bit |
| Introduced | 2006 (QDSP6) |
| Design | 4-way multithreaded VLIW |
| Type | Load–store |
| Encoding | Fixed 4 byte per instruction, up to 4 instructions in VLIW multiinstruction |
| Open | Proprietary |
| Registers | |
| General-purpose | 32-bit GPR: 32, can be paired to 64-bit[1] |
Hexagon is the brand name for a family of digital signal processor (DSP) and later neural processing unit (NPU) products by Qualcomm.[2] Hexagon is also known as QDSP6, standing for “sixth generation digital signal processor.” According to Qualcomm, the Hexagon architecture is designed to deliver performance with low power over a variety of applications.[3][4]
Each version of Hexagon has an instruction set and a micro-architecture. These two features are intimately related.
Hexagon is used in Qualcomm Snapdragon chips, for example in smartphones, cars, wearable devices and other mobile devices and is also used in components of cellular phone networks.
- ^ Baseband exploitation in 2013: Hexagon challenges Archived December 24, 2013, at the Wayback Machine /Ralf-Philipp Weinmann Pacsec 20132013-11-14, Tokyo, Japan: "32-bit unified address space for code and data – Byte addressable; 32 General registers (32-bit) – also usable pairwise: 64-bit register pairs"
- ^ "CSDL | IEEE Computer Society". www.computer.org. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
- ^ "Hexagon DSP SDK". Qualcomm Developer Network. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
- ^ "Hexagon DSP SDK Processor". Qualcomm Developer Network. Retrieved 2021-01-14.