Wirth N. The Design of a RISC Architecture and its Implementation with an FPGA
« 1. Introduction
The idea for this project has two roots. The first was a project to design and implement a small processor for use in embedded systems with several interconnected cores. It was called the Tiny Register Machine (TRM). The second root is a book written by this author some 30 years ago, and revised several times since. Its subject is Compiler Construction. The target for the developed compiler is a hypothetical computer. In the early years this computer was a stack architecture, later replaced by a RISC architecture. Now the intent is to replace the hypothetical, emulated computer by a real one. This idea was made realistic by the advent of programmable hardware components called field programmable gate arrays (FPGA).
The development of this architecture is described in detail in this report. It is intentionally held in a tutorial style and should provide the reader with an insight into the basic concepts of processor design. In particular, it should connect the subjects of architectural and compiler design, which are so closely interconnected.
We are aware of the fact that “real” processors are far more complex than the one presented here. We concentrate on the fundamental concepts rather than on their elaboration. We strive for a fair degree of completeness of facilities, but refrain from their “optimization”. In fact, the dominant part of the vast size and complexity of modern processors and software is due to speed-up called optimization (improvement would be a more honest word). It is the main culprit in obfuscating the basic principles, making them hard, if not impossible to study. In this light, the choice of a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) is obvious.
The use of an FPGA provides a substantial amount of freedom for design. Yet, the hardware designer must be much more aware of availability of resources and of limitations than the software developer. Also, timing is a concern that usually does not occur in software, but pops up unavoidably in circuit design. Nowadays circuits are no longer described in terms of elaborate diagrams, but rather as a formal text. This lets circuit and program design appear quite similar. The circuit description language – we here use Verilog – appears almost the same as a programming language. But one must be aware that differences still exist, the main one being that in software we create mostly sequential processes, whereas in hardware everything “runs” concurrently. However, the presence of a language – a textual definition – is an enormous advantage over graphical schemata. Even more so are systems (tools) that compile such texts into circuits, taking over the arduous task of placing components and connecting them (routing). This holds in particular for FPGAs, where components and wires connecting them are limited, and routing is a very difficult and time-consuming matter.
The development of our RISC progresses through several stages. The first is the design of the architecture itself, (more or less) independent of subsequent implementation considerations. Then follows a first implementation called RISC-0. For this we chose a Harvard Architecture, implying that two distinct memories are used for program and for data. For both we use chip-internal memory, so- called block RAMs. The Harvard architecture allows for a neat separation of the arithmetic from the control unit.
But these blocks of RAM are relatively small (1 - 4K words). The development board used in this project, however, provides an FPGA-external Static RAM with a capacity of 1 MByte. In the second stage (RISC-1) the BRAM for data is replaced by this SRAM.
In the third stage (RISC-2) we switch to a von Neumann Architecture. It uses a single memory for both instructions and data. Of course we use the SRAM of stage 1.
In the last stage (RISC-3) two features are added to round up the development, byte accessing and interrupts. (They might be omitted in a course without consequences).
It follows that RISC-0 and RISC-2 are the corner stones of this project. But we keep in mind that from a programmers’ standpoint all four implementations appear identical (with the exception of the features added in RISC-3). All four have the same architecture and the same instruction set. »
См. также
- http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/FPGA-relatedWork/ — данные статьи и исходники для Verilog на персональном сайте Вирта