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Lipsi: Probably the Smallest Processor in the World

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Architecture of Computing Systems – ARCS 2018 (ARCS 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 10793))

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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.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/jeuneS2/oe.

  2. 2.

    This number is for relative old FPGAs, such as Xilinx Spartan-3 and Altera Cyclone II. Actual FPGAs from Xilinx have 16 Kbit and Altera have 8 Kbit memory blocks.

  3. 3.

    Newer generations is FPGAs use a 6-bit LUT, which can be split into two smaller LUTs.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

    Martin Schoeberl

Authors
  1. Martin Schoeberl
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Martin Schoeberl .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Chair for Chip Design for Embedded Computing, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

    Mladen Berekovic

  2. Chair for Chip Design for Embedded Computing, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

    Rainer Buchty

  3. Institute of Computer Engineering, Universität zu Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany

    Heiko Hamann

  4. School of Computer Science, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

    Dirk Koch

  5. Institute for Information Technology and Communications, Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

    Thilo Pionteck

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Schoeberl, M. (2018). Lipsi: Probably the Smallest Processor in the World. In: Berekovic, M., Buchty, R., Hamann, H., Koch, D., Pionteck, T. (eds) Architecture of Computing Systems – ARCS 2018. ARCS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10793. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77610-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77610-1_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77609-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77610-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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