The design of a firmware engineering tool: the microcode compiler

ABSTRACT

The explosive rate of progress of hardware technology has made the microprogrammable processor characterized by horizontal microcoding extremely attractive for many high speed and real time applications, such as signal processors. However, the human microprogrammer currently has little but assembly language and text editor to help with code developments. The lack of software tools to support microcode generation results in high costs and poor reliability especially when the volume of microcode increases. The application of software tools to microprogramming will be termed firmware engineering in the remainder of this paper.

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