Processor design

The aim of this module is to assemble elementary functions (combinatorial and sequential) to create a programmable processor with an elementary instruction set. The architecture designed will be integrated on an FPGA prototyping board.

The processor to be designed is a general-purpose 8-bit processor. It is capable of executing 4 types of instructions. The processor is based on an 8-bit accumulator register called ACCU. Each instruction is coded on 8 bits. Two bits to encode the type of operation (code.op) and 6 bits to encode the operand or the operand address in memory, depending on the type of instruction.

Skills developed through this module :

• Analyze and use digital circuit design methods for embedded systems - Level 2
• Designing and implementing a programmable architecture for embedded systems - level 2
• Designing and implementing a digital architecture for embedded systems - Level 2

The VHDL language and the Vivado environment from Xilinx.

The module is divided into 3 sessions of 4 hours each. In the first session, the typical simplified architecture of general-purpose processors is detailed. This is followed by table-top work leading to the definition of a hierarchical block diagram of the processor. The other two sessions are devoted to designing the processor using VHDL in Xilinx's Vivado environment.

1 course aid and 1 design aid.