Synthesis and analysis of an industrial embedded microcontroller

This paper presents a case study of synthesis and analysis of the industrial embedded microcontroller HT48100, using the hardware/software co-synthesis tool (PIPER-II) for microcontrollers/microprocessors. The synthesis tool accepts as input the instruction set architecture (behavioral) specification, and produces as outputs the pipelined RTL designs with their simulators, and the reordering constraints which guide the assembler how to generate code for the synthesized designs. The study shows that the synthesis approach was able to help the original design team to evaluate their design quality, analyze the architectural properties and explore possible architectural improvements and their impacts in both hardware and software. Feasible future upgrade for the microcontroller family is identified by the study. Further cooperation with the design team has been undertaken to integrate the synthesis methodology into their design flow