AUTOMATED PROCESSOR GENERATION SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DESIGNING A CONFIGURABLE PROCESSOR

• US 20090172630A1
• Filed: 10/09/2008
• Published: 07/02/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/17/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cadence Design Systems Incorporated (Cadence Group)
• Original Assignee: Cadence Design Systems Incorporated (Cadence Group)
• Inventors: Konas, Pavlos, Srinivasan, Rangarajan, Bhattacharyya, Nupur, Medina, Marines Puig, Lichtenstein, Walter David, Songer, Christopher Mark, Ruddell, Richard, Killian, Earl A., Wang, Albert Ren-Rui, Goodwin, David William, Gonzalez, Ricardo E., Parameswar, Akilesh, Maydan, Dror E.
• Granted Patent: US 9,582,278 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 716/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 30/30 Circuit design
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/30145 Instruction analysis, e.g. decoding, instruction word fields
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/30167 of immediate specifier, e.g. constants

Abstract

A system for generating processor hardware supports a language for significant extensions to the processor instruction set, where the designer specifies only the semantics of the new instructions and the system generates other logic. The extension language provides for the addition of processor state, including register files, and instructions that operate on that state. The language also provides for new data types to be added to the compiler to represent the state added. It allows separate specification of reference semantics and instruction implementation, and uses this to automate design verification. In addition, the system generates formatted instruction set documentation from the language specification.

Claims

1. A system for designing a configurable processor, the system comprising:

hardware generation means for, based on a configuration specification including a predetermined portion and a user-defined portion, generating a description of a hardware implementation of the processor;

software generation means for, based on the configuration specification, generating software development tools specific to the hardware implementation; and

document generation means for generating documentation of a processor instruction set described by the configuration specification based on the configuration specification.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the document generation means is for using reference semantics of instructions defined in the configuration specification to generate the processor instruction set documentation.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the user-defined portion of the configuration specification contains reference semantics of an instruction defined therein and a user-defined specification of at least one of a synopsis and a text description for the user-defined instruction; and

the document generation means is for using the at least one of the synopsis and the text description to generate documentation of the processor instruction set.