A Novel Methodology for the Design of Application Specific Integrated Processors (ASIP) Using a Machine Description Language

The development of application specific instruc- tion set processors (ASIP) is currently the exclusive domain of the semiconductor houses and core vendors. This is due to the fact that buildingsuch an architecture is a difficult task that requires expertise in different domains: application software development tools, processor hardware implemen- tation, and system integration and verification. This article presents a retargetable framework for ASIP design which is based on machine descriptions in the LISA language. From that, software development tools can be generated automat- ically includingHLL C-compiler, assembler, linker, simu- lator, and debugger frontend. Moreover, for architecture implementation, synthesizable HDL code can be derived, which can then be processed by standard synthesis tools. Implementation results for a low-power ASIP for DVB-T acquisition and tracking algorithms designed with the pre- sented methodology will be given. To show the quality of the generated software development tools, they are compared in speed and functionality with commercially available tools of state-of-the-art DSP and µC architectures.