CCSimP — An instruction-level costum-configurable processor for FPLDs

Abstract

New design methodologies, that will increase designer productivity and general quality of design, are necessary in order to utilise the power of FPLDs especially in embedded applications. One of the promissing ways is a merging of the hardware and software parts of a solution, where general processor cells become very important as the core of the software part of the solution, in the custom computing machine. In this paper we present a new processor which can easily be customised to the needs of specific applications and implemented in an FPLD. The new processor's core represents a processor with limited resources and a small instruction set which supports the execution of user-specified instructions in the attached functional units. User-specified application-specific instructions can use the processor's datapath resources or resources contained in the functional unit's datapath. A methodology for customisation of the processor's core is outlined and described.