Praet: Instruction set definition and instruction selection for ASIPs

Apphcation Specific Instruction set Processors (A SIPS) are field or mask programmable processors of which the architecture and instruction set are opti-mised to a speci’c application domain. ASIPS offer a high degree of flexibility and are therefore increasingly being used in competitive markets like telecommuni-cations. However, adequate CAD techniques for the design and programming of ASIPs are missing hith-erto. In this paper, an interactive approach for the definition of optimised microinstruction sets of A SIPS is presented. A second issue is a method for instruc-tion selection when generating code for a predefine ASIP. A combined instruction set and data-path model is generated, onto which the application is mapped.