Design of a general purpose meta-assembler for parallel processor environment in ISPS

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the design of a general-purpose meta-assembler for both single processor and parallel processor environments to be used as a software tool to improve upon the capability of the ISPS (Instruction Set Processor Specification) simulator. Currently, it is not feasible to simulate multi-microprocessor systems capable of performing parallel processing tasks efficiently in the ISPS language. There remains the problem of running long benchmark programs that have to be written in the machine code of the particular architecture(s) under study. With this in mind run-time results of simulated benchmark programs will be reported for various configurations of parallel processing systems using the meta-assembler. We introduce a general purpose assembler for ISPS which will generate the machine code for simulation files. This software package eliminates the inefficiency of writing and testing long benchmark programs in the machine code by providing the user with the capability of writing them in assembly language. This package provides for existing assembly languages and can allow the user to create assembly languages for other possible architecture designs. It is hoped that this software package will make ISPS a more complete and powerful hardware description language.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES
      C.1.2 Multiple Data Stream Architectures (Multiprocessors)
          Subjects: Single-instruction-stream, multiple-data-stream processors (SIMD)

  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: ISPS

General Terms:
Design, Languages, Performance, Theory