3-Software Design Basics in Embedded Systems

Introduction General-Purpose Processor Processor designed for a variety of computation tasks Low unit cost, in part because manufacturer spreads NRE over large numbers of units Motorola sold half a billion 68HC05 microcontrollers in 1996 alone Carefully designed since higher NRE is acceptable Can yield good performance, size and power Low unit cost, short time-to-market/prototype, high flexibility User just writes software; no processor design a.k.a. “microprocessor” – “micro” used when they were implemented on one or a few chips rather than entire rooms

Basic Architecture Control unit and data-path Key differences Note similarity to single-purpose processor Key differences Data-path is general Control unit doesn’t store the algorithm – the algorithm is “programmed” into the memory Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Registers IR PC Controller Memory I/O Control /Status

Data-path Operations ALU operation Store ... ... Load Read memory location into register Processor Control unit Datapath ALU ALU operation Input certain registers through ALU, store back in register Controller +1 Control /Status Registers Store Write register to memory location 10 11 PC IR I/O ... Memory 10 11 ...

Control Unit ... Control unit: configures the datapath operations Sequence of desired operations (“instructions”) stored in memory – “program” Instruction cycle – broken into several sub-operations, each one clock cycle, e.g.: Fetch: Get next instruction into IR Decode: Determine what the instruction means Fetch operands: Move data from memory to datapath register Execute: Move data through the ALU Store results: Write data from register to memory Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Registers IR PC Controller Memory I/O Control /Status 10 ... load R0, M[500] 500 501 100 inc R1, R0 101 store M[501], R1 102 R0 R1

Control Unit Sub-Operations Fetch Get next instruction into IR PC: program counter, always points to next instruction IR: holds the fetched instruction Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Controller Control /Status Registers PC 100 IR R0 R1 load R0, M[500] I/O ... Memory 100 load R0, M[500] 500 10 101 inc R1, R0 501 ... 102 store M[501], R1

Control Unit Sub-Operations Decode Determine what the instruction means Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Controller Control /Status Registers PC 100 IR R0 R1 load R0, M[500] I/O ... Memory 100 load R0, M[500] 500 10 101 inc R1, R0 501 ... 102 store M[501], R1

Control Unit Sub-Operations Fetch operands Move data from memory to data-path register Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Controller Control /Status Registers 10 PC 100 IR R0 R1 load R0, M[500] I/O ... Memory 100 load R0, M[500] 500 10 101 inc R1, R0 501 ... 102 store M[501], R1

Control Unit Sub-Operations Execute Move data through the ALU This particular instruction does nothing during this sub-operation Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Controller Control /Status Registers 10 PC 100 IR R0 R1 load R0, M[500] I/O ... Memory 100 load R0, M[500] 500 10 101 inc R1, R0 501 ... 102 store M[501], R1

Control Unit Sub-Operations Store results Write data from register to memory This particular instruction does nothing during this sub-operation Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Controller Control /Status Registers 10 PC 100 IR R0 R1 load R0, M[500] I/O ... Memory 100 load R0, M[500] 500 10 101 inc R1, R0 501 ... 102 store M[501], R1

Instruction Cycles ... PC=100 Fetch ops Store results Fetch Decode Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Registers IR PC Controller Memory I/O Control /Status 10 ... load R0, M[500] 500 501 100 inc R1, R0 101 store M[501], R1 102 R0 R1 10 Fetch ops Store results Fetch load R0, M[500] Decode Exec. clk 100

Instruction Cycles ... PC=100 PC=101 Fetch ops Store results Fetch Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Registers IR PC Controller Memory I/O Control /Status 10 ... load R0, M[500] 500 501 100 inc R1, R0 101 store M[501], R1 102 R0 R1 Fetch ops Store results Fetch Decode Exec. clk +1 11 Exec. PC=101 Fetch ops Store results inc R1, R0 Fetch Decode clk 10 101

Instruction Cycles ... PC=100 PC=101 PC=102 Fetch ops Store results Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Registers IR PC Controller Memory I/O Control /Status 10 ... load R0, M[500] 500 501 100 inc R1, R0 101 store M[501], R1 102 R0 R1 Fetch ops Store results Fetch Decode Exec. clk PC=101 Fetch ops Store results Fetch Decode Exec. Decode clk 10 11 11 Store results 102 store M[501], R1 Fetch PC=102 Fetch ops Exec. clk

Architectural Considerations N-bit processor N-bit ALU, registers, buses, memory data interface Embedded: 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit common Desktop/servers: 32-bit, even 64 PC size determines address space Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Registers IR PC Controller Memory I/O Control /Status

Architectural Considerations Clock frequency Inverse of clock period Must be longer than longest register to register delay in entire processor Memory access is often the longest Processor Control unit Datapath ALU Registers IR PC Controller Memory I/O Control /Status

Pipelining: Increasing Instruction Throughput Wash 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Non-pipelined Pipelined Dry 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 non-pipelined dish cleaning Time pipelined dish cleaning Time Fetch-instr. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Decode 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Fetch ops. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Pipelined Execute 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Instruction 1 Store res. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Time pipelined instruction execution

Superscalar Architectures Performance can be improved by: Faster clock (but there’s a limit) Pipelining: slice up instruction into stages, overlap stages Multiple ALUs to support more than one instruction stream Superscalar Scalar: non-vector operations Fetches instructions in batches, executes as many as possible May require extensive hardware to detect independent instructions (e.g. multiple ALUs) VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word): each word in memory has multiple independent instructions Relies on the compiler to detect and schedule instructions Currently growing in popularity CISC vs RISC?