Lipsi: Probably the Smallest Processor in the World
Conference paper
First Online:
Abstract
While research on high-performance processors is important, it is also interesting to explore processor architectures at the other end of the spectrum: tiny processor cores for auxiliary functions. While it is common to implement small circuits for such functions, such as a serial port, in dedicated hardware, usually as a state machine or a combination of communicating state machines, these functionalities may also be implemented by a small processor. In this paper, we present Lipsi, a very tiny processor to make it possible to implement classic finite state machine logic in software at a minimal cost.
References
- 1.Schoeberl, M., Schleuniger, P., Puffitsch, W., Brandner, F., Probst, C.W., Karlsson, S., Thorn, T.: Towards a time-predictable dual-issue microprocessor: the Patmos approach. In: First Workshop on Bringing Theory to Practice: Predictability and Performance in Embedded Systems (PPES 2011), Grenoble, France, pp. 11–20, March 2011Google Scholar
- 2.Schoeberl, M., Abbaspour, S., Akesson, B., Audsley, N., Capasso, R., Garside, J., Goossens, K., Goossens, S., Hansen, S., Heckmann, R., Hepp, S., Huber, B., Jordan, A., Kasapaki, E., Knoop, J., Li, Y., Prokesch, D., Puffitsch, W., Puschner, P., Rocha, A., Silva, C., Sparsø, J., Tocchi, A.: T-CREST: time-predictable multi-core architecture for embedded systems. J. Syst. Architect. 61(9), 449–471 (2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 3.Schoeberl, M.: Leros: a tiny microcontroller for FPGAs. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL 2011), Chania, Crete, Greece, pp. 10–14. IEEE Computer Society, September 2011Google Scholar
- 4.Caska, J., Schoeberl, M.: Java dust: how small can embedded Java be? In: Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Java Technologies for Real-Time and Embedded Systems (JTRES 2011), pp. 125–129. ACM, New York, September 2011Google Scholar
- 5.Altera Corporation: Nios II Processor Reference Handbook, May 2011. http://www.altera.com/literature/lit-nio2.jsp, Version NII5V1-11.0
- 6.Xilinx: PicoBlaze 8-bit embedded microcontroller user guide (2010)Google Scholar
- 7.Hempel, G., Hochberger, C.: A resource optimized processor core for FPGA based SoCs. In: Kubatova, H. (ed.) Proceedings of the 10th Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design (DSD 2007), pp. 51–58. IEEE (2007)Google Scholar
- 8.Hennessy, J.L.: VLSI processor architecture. IEEE Trans. Comput. C-33(12), 1221–1246 (1984)Google Scholar
- 9.Gaisler, J.: A portable and fault-tolerant microprocessor based on the SPARC v8 architecture. In: Proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2002), p. 409. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2002)Google Scholar
- 10.Xilinx Inc.: MicroBlaze processor reference guide (2008). Version 9.0Google Scholar
- 11.Robinson, J., Vafaee, S., Scobbie, J., Ritche, M., Rose, J.: The supersmall soft processor. In: 2010 VI Southern Programmable Logic Conference (SPL), pp. 3–8, March 2010Google Scholar
- 12.Nakatsuka, H., Tanaka, Y., Chu, T.V., Takamaeda-Yamazaki, S., Kise, K.: Ultrasmall: the smallest MIPS soft processor. In: 2014 24th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL), pp. 1–4, September 2014Google Scholar
- 13.Danecek, J., Drapal, F., Pluhacek, A., Salcic, Z., Servit, M.: DOP—a simple processor for custom computing machines. J. Microcomput. Appl. 17(3), 239–253 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 14.Bachrach, J., Vo, H., Richards, B., Lee, Y., Waterman, A., Avizienis, R., Wawrzynek, J., Asanovic, K.: Chisel: constructing hardware in a scala embedded language. In: Groeneveld, P., Sciuto, D., Hassoun, S. (eds.) The 49th Annual Design Automation Conference (DAC 2012), pp. 1216–1225. ACM, San Francisco (2012)Google Scholar
- 15.Venners, B., Spoon, L., Odersky, M.: Programming in Scala, 3rd edn. Artima Inc., Mountain View (2016)Google Scholar
Copyright information
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018