Conversion of an 8-bit to a 16-bit Soft-core RISC Processor
Journal Title: International Journal of Electronics Communication and Computer Technology - Year 2013, Vol 3, Issue 2
Abstract
The demand for 8-bit processors nowadays is still going strong despite efforts by manufacturers in producing higher end microcontroller solutions to the mass market. Low-end processor offers a simple, low-cost and fast solution especially on I/O applications development in embedded system. However, due to architectural constraint, complex calculation could not be performed efficiently on 8-bit processor. This paper presents the conversion method from an 8-bit to a 16-bit Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) processor in a soft-core reconfigurable platform in order to extend its capability in handling larger data sets thus enabling intensive calculations process. While the conversion expands the data bus width to 16-bit, it also maintained the simple architecture design of an 8-bit processor. The expansion also provides more room for improvement to the processor’s performance. The modified architecture is successfully simulated in CPUSim together with its new instruction set architecture (ISA). Xilinx Virtex-6 platform is utilized to execute and verified the architecture. Results show that the modified 16-bit RISC architecture only required 17% more register slice on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation which is a slight increase compared to the original 8-bit RISC architecture. A test program containing instruction sets that handle 16-bit data are also simulated and verified. As the 16-bit architecture is described as a soft-core, further modifications could be performed in order to customize the architecture to suit any specific applications.
Authors and Affiliations
Ahmad Jamal Salim| Faculty of Electronics and Computer Engineering Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka Melaka, Malaysia, Sani Irwan Md Salim| Faculty of Electronics and Computer Engineering Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka Melaka, Malaysia, Nur Raihana Samsudin| Faculty of Electronics and Computer Engineering Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka Melaka, Malaysia, Yewguan Soo| Faculty of Electronics and Computer Engineering Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka Melaka, Malaysia
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP8346
- DOI -
- Views 376
- Downloads 23
Analysis of Extremely Low VSWR Characteristics of Feed Network of Rectangular Microstrip Patch Antenna
This paper describes extremely low VSWR characteristics of coaxial and microstrip feed networks for slotloaded rectangular microstrip patch antennas. Both Inset feed and coaxial feed from the ground plane are considere...
Stagnant Timing investigation of Embedded Software on Advanced Processor Architectures
Most processors today are embedded in products like mobile phones, microwave owns, welding machines etc and are not used in PC’s as many believe Since some of these embedded computers are used in time-critical or safety-...
Analytical Model Analysis Of Distributed Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Method
Spectrum sensing is a key function of cognitive radio to prevent the harmful interference with licensed users and identify the available spectrum for improving the spectrum’s utilization. Various methods for spectrum sen...
Handoff Decision Using Fuzzy Logic
The handover or handoff process is of major importance within any cellular telecommunications network. The term handoff refers to the process of transferring an active call or data session from one cell in a cellular...
Performance Analysis and Formulation of Turbo Coded OFDM over Rayleigh & Rician Fading Channel
In wireless communication, to attain high throughput and better transmission quality, there is a need of better system design . Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a techniques for parallel transmission....