Research on In-System Programming IP of RISC-V Processor
Hui Wang, Yuyuan Du, Xiangcheng Mu · 2022
RISC-V, as an open-source simplified instruction set architecture proposed in recent years, is gradually being applied in many fields. In order to facilitate the program update of the RISC-V soft-core processor, an in-system programming IP is provided to the designer. It can be quickly embedded in RISC-V processors by designers. The USB interface is used as a data channel to transmit the data sent by the host computer, and a data transmission format is customized to ensure the accuracy of data transmission. The updated program and the running program are stored independently of each other. When updating programs, existing programs are not overwritten. If the updated program download fails, RISC-V will automatically execute the existing program, which increases the redundancy of the design. Moreover, this IP has good portability and can be easily applied to various versions of RISC-V processors. Finally, the IP has been tested many times on the FPGA, and all of them have completed the program update, which verifies the feasibility and stability of the design.