A Design Methodology for Re-Configurable MPU for an Embedded System and Software on an FPGA

摘要

FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) is an essential device to design of hardware at present. Ways of applying FPGAs are studied actively for system design problems. The problems are on design methods for large scale and speed-up. One of the design methods is SoC (System on a Chip) that realizes to implement all functions of a system to a chip. To realize SoC efficiently, IP (Intellectual property) is very important and is developed for re-use of hardware. Many MPUs (Micro Processing Unit) are developed as IPs. However, most of the MPUs at present have too high specifications and too large scales, as applying to embedded systems. Furthermore, embedded MPUs require functions to execute real-time application program. Then we propose a flexible and small scale MPU and it's design method. This paper is shown our proposed design method with "specifications description language" and the examples to apply the design method, and indicates problems and reasons to implement processors in an FPGA.