Hardware-software-codesign of application specific microcontrollers with the ASM environment
Andreas Both, B. Biermann, Renee Lerch, Yiannos Manoli, K. Sievert · 1994
A new CAD system for generation of application specific microcontrollers is presented. It is based on a properly defined architecture model and consists of a set of tools for instruction set description, HW-SW-cosimulation of the processor and the application software, compiler generation, datapath and controlpath synthesis, and datapath animation. One of these tools, the MicroDebugger, follows a new approach of HW-SW-cosimulation particularly matching the problems of microcontroller design. The system proved it's effectiveness throughout numerous designs including a small multitasking RISC for embedded applications. The attempt to automatically generate application specific microcontroller cores (instruction set architectures) will fail if one does not restrict the huge design space. Such a restriction must not affect the implementation method but it must properly define an architecture model for synthesis. The criteria for such a first design space demarcation result from an analysis of the class of targeted applications. The ASM Environment targets control and interrupt dominated applications with medium data throughput. Architectures of this class are part of a lot of electronic equipment, as embedded microcontrollers in the automotive, industrial, telecom and white good markets. 1. Introduction Furthermore