An embedded Forth core with floating point and branch prediction
Darrin M. Hanna, Bryant Jones, Lincoln Lorenz, Steffen Porthun · 2013
Forth is a flexible language used in embedded systems. In this paper we present a novel soft core that executes native Forth, including floating-point operations, and uses branch prediction for fast execution. The core is designed to be a replacement of an embedded controller running Forth in a VM. The branch prediction architecture was created specifically for literal, call-returns, and jump instructions, which occur most frequently in Forth. Our benchmarks show that these improvements are significant to speeding up overall execution time.