denishoornaert/simplesoftcorearchitecture

Simple Softcore Architecture

Simple load/store CPU architecture that aims to be eventually ran on an FPGA.

The architecture is neither designed to be a RISC or CISC architecture. In fact, all the functionalities enabled by the architecture will be arbitrarily decided. The main objective of this project is to test my knowledge of hardware description languages (here VHDL), CPU architecture and --- eventually --- compilers.

Therefore, as suggested above, the road map is composed of several steps :

• the design of a simple --- but sound --- CPU architecture
• creation of an assembly language induced by the ISA (i.e. compiler asm to bitstraem)
• enabling of basic input/output management (keyboard input and display output)
• implementation of internal interruptions and an ISR
• implementation of an RTC (could be used to enable the utilization of timers)
• physical implementation on a specific board (yet to be determined)
• creation of high-level language (c-like)