A new approach in microcode optimization

Author

Rauscher, Reinhard

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Hamburg Univ., Germany

fYear

1994

fDate

5-8 Sep 1994

Firstpage

27

Lastpage

34

Abstract

The design flow an development of microcontrolled devices deals with a large number of design decisions which influence the realization costs. Some of these decisions are arbitrary choices between design alternatives with hardly any impact on the hardware structure. An example for such design alternatives is the ordering of data inputs at a multiplexor, which can be permutated without any costs in the data path. But such a reordering changes the control-codes for the multiplexor and may possibly allow a reduction of the size of the microcode. This paper presents an algorithm for microcode optimization which uses recoding of arbitrarily coded fields of the microinstruction. A set of design examples is used to demonstrate improvements achieved with our approach

Keywords

firmware; microprogramming; optimisation; arbitrarily coded fields; data inputs; design decisions; microcode optimization; microcontrolled devices; microinstruction; realization costs; Algorithm design and analysis; Computer science; Costs; Design optimization; Hardware; Microprocessors; Microprogramming; Programmable logic arrays; Read only memory; Size control;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

EUROMICRO 94. System Architecture and Integration. Proceedings of the 20th EUROMICRO Conference.

Conference_Location

Liverpool

Print_ISBN

0-8186-6430-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EURMIC.1994.390410

Filename

390410