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/spec.tex
48,7 → 48,13
\title{Specification}
\author{Dan Gisselquist, Ph.D.}
\email{dgisselq (at) opencores.org}
\revision{Rev.~0.3}
\revision{Rev.~0.4}
\definecolor{webred}{rgb}{0.2,0,0}
\definecolor{webgreen}{rgb}{0,0.2,0}
\usepackage[dvips,ps2pdf,colorlinks=true,
anchorcolor=black,pagecolor=webgreen,pdfpagelabels,hypertexnames,
pdfauthor={Dan Gisselquist},
pdfsubject={Zip CPU}]{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\pagestyle{gqtekspecplain}
\titlepage
70,6 → 76,7
copy.
\end{license}
\begin{revisionhistory}
0.4 & 9/19/2015 & Gisselquist & Added DMA controller, improved stall information, and self--assessment info.\\\hline
0.3 & 8/22/2015 & Gisselquist & First completed draft\\\hline
0.2 & 8/19/2015 & Gisselquist & Still Draft, more complete \\\hline
0.1 & 8/17/2015 & Gisselquist & Incomplete First Draft \\\hline
89,13 → 96,16
 
There's more to it, though. There's a lot that I would like to do with a
processor, and I want to be able to do it in a vendor independent fashion.
I would like to be able to generate Verilog code that can run equivalently
on both Xilinx and Altera chips, and that can be easily ported from one
manufacturer's chipsets to another. Even more, before purchasing a chip or a
board, I would like to know that my soft core works. I would like to build a test
bench to test components with, and Verilator is my chosen test bench. This
forces me to use all Verilog, and it prevents me from using any proprietary
cores. For this reason, Microblaze and Nios are out of the question.
First, I would like to be able to place this processor inside an FPGA. Without
paying royalties, ARM is out of the question. I would then like to be able to
generate Verilog code, both for the processor and the system it sits within,
that can run equivalently on both Xilinx and Altera chips, and that can be
easily ported from one manufacturer's chipsets to another. Even more, before
purchasing a chip or a board, I would like to know that my soft core works. I
would like to build a test bench to test components with, and Verilator is my
chosen test bench. This forces me to use all Verilog, and it prevents me from
using any proprietary cores. For this reason, Microblaze and Nios are out of
the question.
 
Why not OpenRISC? That's a hard question. The OpenRISC team has done some
wonderful work on an amazing processor, and I'll have to admit that I am
122,7 → 132,7
\setcounter{page}{1}
 
 
The original goal of the ZIP CPU was to be a very simple CPU. You might
The original goal of the Zip CPU was to be a very simple CPU. You might
think of it as a poor man's alternative to the OpenRISC architecture.
For this reason, all instructions have been designed to be as simple as
possible, and are all designed to be executed in one instruction cycle per
297,7 → 307,7
\section{Simplified Bus}
The bus architecture of the Zip CPU is that of a simplified WISHBONE bus.
It has been simplified in this fashion: all operations are 32--bit operations.
The bus is neither little endian nor bit endian. For this reason, all words
The bus is neither little endian nor big endian. For this reason, all words
are 32--bits. All instructions are also 32--bits wide. Everything has been
built around the 32--bit word.
 
318,9 → 328,28
The CPU can access both register sets via move instructions from the
supervisor state, whereas the user state can only access the user registers.
 
The status register is special, and bears further mention. The lower
10 bits of the status register form a set of CPU state and condition codes.
Writes to other bits of this register are preserved.
The status register is special, and bears further mention. As shown in
Fig.~\ref{tbl:cc-register},
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{bitlist}
31\ldots 11 & R/W & Reserved for future uses\\\hline
10 & R & (Reserved for) Bus-Error Flag\\\hline
9 & R & Trap, or user interrupt, Flag. Cleared on return to userspace.\\\hline
8 & R & (Reserved for) Illegal Instruction Flag\\\hline
7 & R/W & Break--Enable\\\hline
6 & R/W & Step\\\hline
5 & R/W & Global Interrupt Enable (GIE)\\\hline
4 & R/W & Sleep. When GIE is also set, the CPU waits for an interrupt.\\\hline
3 & R/W & Overflow\\\hline
2 & R/W & Negative. The sign bit was set as a result of the last ALU instruction.\\\hline
1 & R/W & Carry\\\hline
0 & R/W & Zero. The last ALU operation produced a zero.\\\hline
\end{bitlist}
\caption{Condition Code Register Bit Assignment}\label{tbl:cc-register}
\end{center}\end{table}
the lower 11~bits of the status register form
a set of CPU state and condition codes. Writes to other bits of this register
are preserved.
 
Of the condition codes, the bottom four bits are the current flags:
Zero (Z),
371,13 → 400,11
This functionality was added to enable an external debugger to
set and manage breakpoints.
 
The ninth bit is reserved for a floating point enable bit. When set, the
arithmetic for the next instruction will be sent to a floating point unit.
Such a unit may later be added as an extension to the Zip CPU. If the
CPU does not support floating point instructions, this bit will never be set.
The instruction set could also be simply extended to allow other data types
in this fashion, such as two by 16--bit vector operations or four by 8--bit
vector operations.
The ninth bit is reserved for an illegal instruction bit. When the CPU
tries to execute either a non-existant instruction, or an instruction from
an address that produces a bus error, the CPU will (once implemented) switch
to supervisor mode while setting this bit. The bit will automatically be
cleared upon any return to user mode.
 
The tenth bit is a trap bit. It is set whenever the user requests a soft
interrupt, and cleared on any return to userspace command. This allows the
404,7 → 431,7
\end{center}\end{table}
 
\section{Conditional Instructions}
Most, although not quite all, instructions are conditionally executed. From
Most, although not quite all, instructions may be conditionally executed. From
the four condition code flags, eight conditions are defined. These are shown
in Tbl.~\ref{tbl:conditions}.
\begin{table}
424,9 → 451,12
\end{center}
\end{table}
There is no condition code for less than or equal, not C or not V. Sorry,
I ran out of space in 3--bits. Using these conditions will take an extra
instruction and a pipeline stall. (Ex: \hbox{\em (Stall)}; \hbox{\tt TST \$4,CC;} \hbox{\tt STO.NZ R0,(R1)})
I ran out of space in 3--bits. Conditioning on a non--supported condition
is still possible, but it will take an extra instruction and a pipeline stall. (Ex: \hbox{\em (Stall)}; \hbox{\tt TST \$4,CC;} \hbox{\tt STO.NZ R0,(R1)})
 
Conditionally executed ALU instructions will not further adjust the
condition codes.
 
\section{Operand B}
Many instruction forms have a 21-bit source ``Operand B'' associated with them.
This Operand B is either equal to a register plus a signed immediate offset,
448,7 → 478,7
instruction possibilities.
 
\section{Address Modes}
The ZIP CPU supports two addressing modes: register plus immediate, and
The Zip CPU supports two addressing modes: register plus immediate, and
immediate address. Addresses are therefore encoded in the same fashion as
Operand B's, shown above.
 
484,12 → 514,11
all MOV registers are supervisor registers, and display them as normal.
Anything with the user bit set will be treated as a user register. The CPU
will quietly ignore the supervisor bits while in user mode, and anything
marked as a user register will always be valid. (Did I just say that in the
last paragraph?)
marked as a user register will always be valid.
 
\section{Multiply Operations}
The Zip CPU supports two Multiply operations, a
16x16 bit signed multiply (MPYS) and the same but unsigned (MPYU). In both
The Zip CPU supports two Multiply operations, a 16x16 bit signed multiply
({\tt MPYS}) and a 16x16 bit unsigned multiply ({\tt MPYU}). In both
cases, the operand is a register plus a 16-bit immediate, subject to the
rule that the register cannot be the PC or CC registers. The PC register
field has been stolen to create a multiply by immediate instruction. The
496,13 → 525,14
CC register field is reserved.
 
\section{Floating Point}
The ZIP CPU does not support floating point operations. However, the
The Zip CPU does not (yet) support floating point operations. However, the
instruction set reserves two possibilities for future floating point
operations.
 
The first floating point operation hole in the instruction set involves
setting the floating point bit in the CC register. The next instruction
will simply interpret its operands as floating point instructions.
setting a proposed (but non-existent) floating point bit in the CC register.
The next instruction
would then simply interpret its operands as floating point instructions.
Not all instructions, however, have floating point equivalents. Further, the
immediate fields do not apply in floating point mode, and must be set to
zero. Not all instructions make sense as floating point operations.
513,15 → 543,15
 
The other possibility for floating point operations involves exploiting the
hole in the instruction set that the NOOP and BREAK instructions reside within.
These two instructions use 24--bits of address space. A simple adjustment
to this space could create instructions with 4--bit register addresses for
each register, a 3--bit field for conditional execution, and a 2--bit field
for which operation. In this fashion, such a floating point capability would
only fill 13--bits of the 24--bit field, still leaving lots of room for
expansion.
These two instructions use 24--bits of address space, when only a single bit
is necessary. A simple adjustment to this space could create instructions
with 4--bit register addresses for each register, a 3--bit field for
conditional execution, and a 2--bit field for which operation.
In this fashion, such a floating point capability would only fill 13--bits of
the 24--bit field, still leaving lots of room for expansion.
 
In both cases, the Zip CPU would support 32--bit single precision floats
only.
only, since other choices would complicate the pipeline.
 
The current architecture does not support a floating point not-implemented
interrupt. Any soft floating point emulation must be done deliberately.
531,9 → 561,10
Tbl.~\ref{tbl:zip-instructions}.
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|c|}\hline
\rowcolor[gray]{0.85}
Op Code & \multicolumn{8}{c|}{31\ldots24} & \multicolumn{8}{c|}{23\ldots 16}
& \multicolumn{8}{c|}{15\ldots 8} & \multicolumn{8}{c|}{7\ldots 0}
& Sets CC? \\\hline
& Sets CC? \\\hline\hline
CMP(Sub) & \multicolumn{4}{l|}{4'h0}
& \multicolumn{4}{l|}{D. Reg}
& \multicolumn{3}{l|}{Cond.}
564,7 → 595,7
& \multicolumn{4}{l|}{4'he}
& \multicolumn{24}{l|}{24'h01}
& \\\hline
{\em Rsrd} & \multicolumn{4}{l|}{4'h4}
{\em Reserved} & \multicolumn{4}{l|}{4'h4}
& \multicolumn{4}{l|}{4'he}
& \multicolumn{24}{l|}{24'bits, but not 0 or 1.}
& \\\hline
667,22 → 698,22
 
As you can see, there's lots of room for instruction set expansion. The
NOOP and BREAK instructions are the only instructions within one particular
24--bit hole. This spaces are reserved for future enhancements. For example,
floating point operations, consisting of a 3-bit floating point operation,
two 4-bit registers, no immediate offset, and a 3-bit condition would fit
nicely into 14--bits of this address space--making it so that the floating
point bit in the CC register need not be used.
24--bit hole. The rest of this space is reserved for future enhancements.
 
\section{Derived Instructions}
The ZIP CPU supports many other common instructions, but not all of them
The Zip CPU supports many other common instructions, but not all of them
are single cycle instructions. The derived instruction tables,
Tbls.~\ref{tbl:derived-1}, \ref{tbl:derived-2}, and~\ref{tbl:derived-3},
Tbls.~\ref{tbl:derived-1}, \ref{tbl:derived-2}, \ref{tbl:derived-3}
and~\ref{tbl:derived-4},
help to capture some of how these other instructions may be implemented on
the ZIP CPU. Many of these instructions will have assembly equivalents,
the Zip CPU. Many of these instructions will have assembly equivalents,
such as the branch instructions, to facilitate working with the CPU.
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{p{1.4in}p{1.5in}p{3in}}\\\hline
Mapped & Actual & Notes \\\hline
ABS Rx
& \parbox[t]{1.5in}{TST -1,Rx\\NEG.LT Rx}
& Absolute value, depends upon derived NEG.\\\hline
\parbox[t]{1.4in}{ADD Ra,Rx\\ADDC Rb,Ry}
& \parbox[t]{1.5in}{Add Ra,Rx\\ADD.C \$1,Ry\\Add Rb,Ry}
& Add with carry \\\hline
730,7 → 761,11
MOV \$Addr+PC,PC \\
ADD \$1,SP}
& Jump to Subroutine. Note the required cleanup instruction after
returning. \\\hline
returning. This could easily be turned into a three instruction
operand, removing the preliminary stack instruction before and
the cleanup after, by adjusting how any stack frame was built for
this routine to include space at the top of the stack for the PC.
\\\hline
JSR PC+\$Addr
& \parbox[t]{1.5in}{MOV \$3+PC,R12 \\ MOV \$addr+PC,PC}
&This is the high speed
789,6 → 824,7
OR Rz,Rx}
& Logical shift right with carry \\\hline
NEG Rx & \parbox[t]{1.5in}{XOR \$-1,Rx \\ ADD \$1,Rx} & \\\hline
NEG.C Rx & \parbox[t]{1.5in}{MOV.C \$-1+Rx,Rx\\XOR.C \$-1,Rx} & \\\hline
NOOP & NOOP & While there are many
operations that do nothing, such as MOV Rx,Rx, or OR \$0,Rx, these
operations have consequences in that they might stall the bus if
802,10 → 838,24
(SP). Hence you read from it, then increment it, lest having
incremented it first something then comes along and writes to that
value before you can read the result. \\\hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Derived Instructions, continued}\label{tbl:derived-2}
\end{center}\end{table}
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{p{1.4in}p{1.5in}p{3in}}\\\hline
PUSH Rx
& \parbox[t]{1.5in}{SUB \$1,SP \\
STO Rx,\$1(SP)}
& \\\hline
PUSH Rx-Ry
& \parbox[t]{1.5in}{SUB \$n,SP \\
STO Rx,\$n(SP)
\ldots \\
STO Ry,\$1(SP)}
& Multiple pushes at once only need the single subtract from the
stack pointer. This derived instruction is analogous to a similar one
on the Motoroloa 68k architecture, although the Zip Assembler
does not support this instruction (yet).\\\hline
RESET
& \parbox[t]{1in}{STO \$1,\$watchdog(R12)\\NOOP\\NOOP}
& \parbox[t]{3in}{This depends upon the peripheral base address being
813,14 → 863,9
 
Another opportunity might be to jump to the reset address from within
supervisor mode.}\\\hline
RET & \parbox[t]{1.5in}{LOD \$-1(SP),PC}
RET & \parbox[t]{1.5in}{LOD \$1(SP),PC}
& Note that this depends upon the calling context to clean up the
stack, as outlined for the JSR instruction. \\\hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Derived Instructions, continued}\label{tbl:derived-2}
\end{center}\end{table}
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{p{1.4in}p{1.5in}p{3in}}\\\hline
RET & MOV R12,PC
& This is the high(er) speed version, that doesn't touch the stack.
As such, it doesn't suffer a stall on memory read/write to the stack.
859,14 → 904,19
& While no extra registers are needed, this example
does take 3-clocks. \\\hline
TRAP \#X
& LDILO \$x,CC
& This approach uses the unused bits of the CC register as a TRAP
address. The user will need to make certain
that the SLEEP and GIE bits are not set in \$x. LDI would also work,
however using LDILO permits the use of conditional traps. (i.e.,
trap if the zero flag is set.) Should you wish to trap off of a
register value, you could equivalently load \$x into the register and
then MOV it into the CC register. \\\hline
& \parbox[t]{1.5in}{LDI \$x,R0 \\ AND ~\$GIE,CC }
& This works because whenever a user lowers the \$GIE flag, it sets
a TRAP bit within the CC register. Therefore, upon entering the
supervisor state, the CPU only need check this bit to know that it
got there via a TRAP. The trap could be made conditional by making
the LDI and the AND conditional. In that case, the assembler would
quietly turn the LDI instruction into an LDILO and LDIHI pair,
but the effectt would be the same. \\\hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Derived Instructions, continued}\label{tbl:derived-3}
\end{center}\end{table}
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{p{1.4in}p{1.5in}p{3in}}\\\hline
TST Rx
& TST \$-1,Rx
& Set the condition codes based upon Rx. Could also do a CMP \$0,Rx,
878,20 → 928,36
& Wait 'til interrupt. In an interrupts disabled context, this
becomes a HALT instruction.
\end{tabular}
\caption{Derived Instructions, continued}\label{tbl:derived-3}
\caption{Derived Instructions, continued}\label{tbl:derived-4}
\end{center}\end{table}
\iffalse
\fi
\section{Pipeline Stages}
As mentioned in the introduction, and highlighted in Fig.~\ref{fig:cpu},
the Zip CPU supports a five stage pipeline.
\begin{enumerate}
\item {\bf Prefetch}: Read instruction from memory (cache if possible). This
\item {\bf Prefetch}: Reads instruction from memory and into a cache, if so
configured. This
stage is actually pipelined itself, and so it will stall if the PC
ever changes. Stalls are also created here if the instruction isn't
in the prefetch cache.
\item {\bf Decode}: Decode instruction into op code, register(s) to read, and
immediate offset. This stage also determines whether the flags will
 
The Zip CPU supports one of two prefetch methods, depending upon a flag
set at build time within the {\tt zipcpu.v} file. The simplest is a
non--cached implementation of a prefetch. This implementation is
fairly small, and ideal for
users of the Zip CPU who need the extra space on the FPGA fabric.
However, because this non--cached version has no cache, the maximum
number of instructions per clock is limited to about one per five.
 
The second prefetch module is a pipelined prefetch with a cache. This
module tries to keep the instruction address within a window of valid
instruction addresses. While effective, it is not a traditional
cache implementation. One unique feature of this cache implementation,
however, is that it can be cleared in a single clock. A disappointing
feature, though, was that it needs an extra internal pipeline stage
to be implemented.
 
\item {\bf Decode}: Decodes an instruction into op code, register(s) to read,
and immediate offset. This stage also determines whether the flags will
be set or whether the result will be written back.
\item {\bf Read Operands}: Read registers and apply any immediate values to
them. There is no means of detecting or flagging arithmetic overflow
898,164 → 964,26
or carry when adding the immediate to the operand. This stage will
stall if any source operand is pending.
\item Split into two tracks: An {\bf ALU} which will accomplish a simple
instruction, and the {\bf MemOps} stage which accomplishes memory
read/write.
instruction, and the {\bf MemOps} stage which handles {\tt LOD} (load)
and {\tt STO} (store) instructions.
\begin{itemize}
\item Loads stall instructions that access the register until it is
written to the register set.
\item Condition codes are available upon completion
\item Issuing an instruction to the memory while the memory is busy will
stall the entire pipeline. If the bus deadlocks, only a reset
will release the CPU. (Watchdog timer, anyone?)
\item Loads will stall the entire pipeline until complete.
\item Condition codes are available upon completion of the ALU stage
\item Issuing an instruction to the memory unit while the memory unit
is busy will stall the entire pipeline. If the bus deadlocks,
only a reset will release the CPU. (Watchdog timer, anyone?)
\item The Zip CPU currently has no means of reading and acting on any
error conditions on the bus.
\end{itemize}
\item {\bf Write-Back}: Conditionally write back the result to the register
set, applying the condition. This routine is bi-re-entrant: either the
set, applying the condition. This routine is bi-entrant: either the
memory or the simple instruction may request a register write.
\end{enumerate}
 
The Zip CPU does not support out of order execution. Therefore, if the memory
unit stalls, every other instruction stalls. Memory stores, however, can take
place concurrently with ALU operations, although memory reads cannot.
place concurrently with ALU operations, although memory reads (loads) cannot.
 
\iffalse
 
\section{Pipeline Logic}
How the CPU handles some instruction combinations can be telling when
determining what happens in the pipeline. The following lists some examples:
\begin{itemize}
\item {\bf Delayed Branching}
 
I had originally hoped to implement delayed branching. My goal
was that the compiler would handle any pipeline stall conditions so
that the pipeline logic could be simpler within the CPU. I ran into
two problems with this.
 
The first problem has to deal with debug mode. When the debugger
single steps an instruction, that instruction goes to completion.
This means that if the instruction moves a value to the PC register,
the PC register would now contain that value, indicating that the
next instruction would be on the other side of the branch. There's
just no easy way around this: the entire CPU state must be captured
by the registers, to include the program counter. What value should
the program counter be equal to? The branch? Fine. The address
you are branching to? Fine. The address of the delay slot? Problem.
 
The second problem with delayed branching is the idea of suspending
processing for an interrupt. Which address should the CPU return
to upon completing the interrupt processing? The branch? Good. The
address after the branch? Also good. The address of the delay slot?
Not so good.
 
If you then add into this mess the idea that, if the CPU is running
from a really slow memory such as the flash, the delay slot may never
be filled before the branch is determined, then this makes even less
sense.
 
For all of these reasons, this CPU does not support delayed branching.
 
\item {\bf Register Result:} {\tt MOV R0,R1; MOV R1,R2 }
 
What value does R2 get, the value of R1 before the first move or the
value of R0? The Zip CPU has been optimized so that neither of these
instructions require a pipeline stall--unless an immediate were to
be added to R1 in the second instruction.
 
The ZIP CPU architecture requires that R2 must equal R0 at the end of
this operation. Even better, such combinations do not (normally)
stall the pipeline.
 
\item {\bf Condition Codes Result:} {\tt CMP R0,R1;} {\tt MOV.EQ \$x,PC}
 
At issue is the same item as above, save that the CMP instruction
updates the flags that the MOV instruction depends upon.
 
The Zip CPU architecture requires that condition codes must be updated
and available immediately for the next instruction without stalling the
pipeline.
 
\item {\bf Condition Codes Register Result:} {\tt CMP R0,R1; MOV CC,R2}
 
At issue is the
fact that the logic supporting the CC register is more complicated than
the logic supporting any other register.
 
The ZIP CPU will stall for a cycle cycle on this instruction.
\item {\bf Condition Codes Register Operand:} {\tt MOV R0,R1; MOV CC,R2}
 
Unlike the previous case, this move prior to reading the {\tt CC}
register does not impact the {\tt CC} register. Therefore, this
does not stall the bus, whereas the previous one would.
\end{itemize}
 
As I've studied this, I find several approaches to handling pipeline
issues. These approaches (and their consequences) are listed below.
 
\begin{itemize}
\item {\bf All issued instructions complete, stages stall individually}
 
What about a slow pre-fetch?
 
Nominally, this works well: any issued instruction
just runs to completion. If there are four issued instructions in the
pipeline, with the writeback instruction being a write-to-PC
instruction, the other three instructions naturally finish.
This approach fails when reading instructions from the flash,
since such reads require N clocks to clocks to complete. Thus
there may be only one instruction in the pipeline if reading from flash,
or a full pipeline if reading from cache. Each of these approaches
would produce a different response.
 
For this reason, the Zip CPU works off of a different basis: All
instructions that enter either the ALU or the memory unit will
complete. Stages still stall individually.
 
\item {\bf Issued instructions may be canceled}
 
The problem here is that
memory operations cannot be canceled: even reads may have side effects
on peripherals that cannot be canceled later. Further, in the case of
an interrupt, it's difficult to know what to cancel. What happens in
a \hbox{\tt MOV.C \$x,PC} followed by a \hbox{\tt MOV \$y,PC}
instruction? Which get canceled?
 
Because it isn't clear what would need to be canceled, the Zip CPU
will not permit this combination. A MOV to the PC register will be
followed by a stall, and possibly many stalls, so that the second
move to PC will never be executed.
 
\item {\bf All issued instructions complete.}
 
In this example, we try all issued instructions complete, but the
entire pipeline stalls if one stage is not filled. In this approach,
though, we again struggle with the problems associated with
delayed branching. Upon attempting to restart the processor, where
do you restart it from?
 
\item {\bf Memory instructions must complete}
 
All instructions that enter into the memory module {\em must}
complete. Issued instructions from the prefetch, decode, or operand
read stages may or may not complete. Jumps into code must be valid,
so that interrupt returns may be valid. All instructions entering the
ALU complete.
 
This looks to be the simplest approach.
While the logic may be difficult, this appears to be the only
re-entrant approach.
 
A {\tt new\_pc} flag will be high anytime the PC changes in an
unpredictable way (i.e., it doesn't increment). This includes jumps
as well as interrupts and interrupt returns. Whenever this flag may
go high, memory operations and ALU operations will stall until the
result is known. When the flag does go high, anything in the prefetch,
decode, and read-op stage will be invalidated.
 
\end{itemize}
\fi
 
\section{Pipeline Stalls}
The processing pipeline can and will stall for a variety of reasons. Some of
these are obvious, some less so. These reasons are listed below:
1062,20 → 990,23
\begin{itemize}
\item When the prefetch cache is exhausted
 
This should be obvious. If the prefetch cache doesn't have the instruction
in memory, the entire pipeline must stall until enough of the prefetch cache
is loaded to support the next instruction.
This reason should be obvious. If the prefetch cache doesn't have the
instruction in memory, the entire pipeline must stall until enough of the
prefetch cache is loaded to support the next instruction.
 
\item While waiting for the pipeline to load following any taken branch, jump,
return from interrupt or switch to interrupt context (6 clocks)
return from interrupt or switch to interrupt context (5 stall cycles)
 
If the PC suddenly changes, the pipeline is subsequently cleared and needs to
be reloaded. Given that there are five stages to the pipeline, that accounts
for five of the six delay clocks. The last clock is lost in the prefetch
for four of the five stalls. The stall cycle is lost in the pipelined prefetch
stage which needs at least one clock with a valid PC before it can produce
a new output. Hence, six clocks will always be lost anytime the pipeline needs
to be cleared.
a new output.
 
The Zip CPU handles {\tt MOV \$X(PC),PC}, {\tt ADD \$X,PC}, and
{\tt LDI \$X,PC} instructions specially, however. These instructions, when
not conditioned on the flags, can execute with only 3~stall cycles.
 
\item When reading from a prior register while also adding an immediate offset
\begin{enumerate}
\item\ {\tt OPCODE ?,RA}
1088,12 → 1019,15
any instruction that will write back an operand must be separated from the
opcode that will read and apply an immediate offset by one instruction. The
good news is that this stall can easily be mitigated by proper scheduling.
That is, any instruction that does not add an immediate to {\tt RA} may be
scheduled into the stall slot.
 
\item When writing to the CC or PC Register
\item When any write to either the CC or PC Register is followed by a memory
operation
\begin{enumerate}
\item\ {\tt OPCODE RA,PC} {\em Ex: a branch opcode}
\item\ {\em (stall, even if jump not taken)}
\item\ {\tt OPCODE RA,RB}
\item\ {\tt LOD \$X(RA),RB}
\end{enumerate}
Since branches take place in the writeback stage, the Zip CPU will stall the
pipeline for one clock anytime there may be a possible jump. This prevents
1100,12 → 1034,14
an instruction from executing a memory access after the jump but before the
jump is recognized.
 
This stall cannot be mitigated through scheduling.
This stall may be mitigated by shuffling the operations immediately following
a potential branch so that an ALU operation follows the branch instead of a
memory operation.
 
\item When reading from the CC register after setting the flags
\begin{enumerate}
\item\ {\tt ALUOP RA,RB}
\item\ {\em (stall}
\item\ {\tt ALUOP RA,RB} {\em Ex: a compare opcode}
\item\ {\em (stall)}
\item\ {\tt TST sys.ccv,CC}
\item\ {\tt BZ somewhere}
\end{enumerate}
1122,16 → 1058,16
that references the CC register. For example, {\tt MOV \$addr+PC,uPC}
followed by an {\tt RTU} ({\tt OR \$GIE,CC}) instruction will not incur
this stall, whereas an {\tt OR \$BREAKEN,CC} followed by an {\tt OR \$STEP,CC}
will incur the stall.
will incur the stall, while a {\tt LDI \$BREAKEN|\$STEP,CC} will not.
 
\item When waiting for a memory read operation to complete
\begin{enumerate}
\item\ {\tt LOD address,RA}
\item\ {\em (multiple stalls, bus dependent, 7 clocks best)}
\item\ {\em (multiple stalls, bus dependent, 4 clocks best)}
\item\ {\tt OPCODE I+RA,RB}
\end{enumerate}
 
Remember, the ZIP CPU does not support out of order execution. Therefore,
Remember, the Zip CPU does not support out of order execution. Therefore,
anytime the memory unit becomes busy both the memory unit and the ALU must
stall until the memory unit is cleared. This is especially true of a load
instruction, which must still write its operand back to the register file.
1146,18 → 1082,35
\item Memory operation followed by a memory operation
\begin{enumerate}
\item\ {\tt STO address,RA}
\item\ {\em (multiple stalls, bus dependent, 7 clocks best)}
\item\ {\em (multiple stalls, bus dependent, 4 clocks best)}
\item\ {\tt LOD address,RB}
\item\ {\em (multiple stalls, bus dependent, 7 clocks best)}
\item\ {\em (multiple stalls, bus dependent, 4 clocks best)}
\end{enumerate}
 
In this case, the LOD instruction cannot start until the STALL is finished.
In this case, the LOD instruction cannot start until the STO is finished.
With proper scheduling, it is possible to do something in the ALU while the
STO is busy, but otherwise this pipeline will stall waiting for it to complete.
memory unit is busy with the STO instruction, but otherwise this pipeline will
stall waiting for it to complete.
 
Note that even though the Wishbone bus can support pipelined accesses at
one access per clock, only the prefetch stage can take advantage of this.
Load and Store instructions are stuck at one wishbone cycle per instruction.
 
\item When waiting for a conditional memory read operation to complete
\begin{enumerate}
\item\ {\tt LOD.Z address,RA}
\item\ {\em (multiple stalls, bus dependent, 7 clocks best)}
\item\ {\tt OPCODE I+RA,RB}
\end{enumerate}
 
In this case, the Zip CPU doesn't warn the prefetch cache to get off the bus
two cycles before using the bus, so there's a potential for an extra three
cycle cost due to bus contention between the prefetch and the CPU.
 
This is true for both the LOD and the STO instructions, with the exception that
the STO instruction will continue in parallel with any ALU instructions that
follow it.
 
\end{itemize}
 
 
1279,23 → 1232,36
should be sorted, and the next alarm in terms of Jiffies should be written
to the register.
 
\section{Manual Cache}
\section{Direct Memory Access Controller}
 
The manual cache is an experimental setting that may not remain with the Zip
CPU for very long. It is designed to facilitate running from FLASH or ROM
memory, although the pipeline prefetch cache really makes this need obsolete.
The manual
cache works by copying data from a wishbone address (range) into the cache
register, and then by making that memory available as memory to the Zip System.
It is a {\em manual cache} because the processor must first specify what
memory to copy, and then once copied the processor can only access the cache
memory by the cache memory location. There is no transparency. It is perhaps
best described as a combination DMA controller and local memory.
The Direct Memory Access (DMA) controller can be used to either move memory
from one location to another, to read from a peripheral into memory, or to
write from a peripheral into memory all without CPU intervention. Further,
since the DMA controller can issue (and does issue) pipeline wishbone accesses,
any DMA memory move will by nature be faster than a corresponding program
accomplishing the same move. To put this to numbers, it may take a program
18~clocks per word transferred, whereas this DMA controller can move one
word in two clocks--provided it has bus access. (The CPU gets priority over the
bus.)
 
Worse, this cache is likely going to be removed from the ZipSystem. Having used
the ZipSystem now for some time, I have yet to find a need or use for the manual
cache. I will likely replace this peripheral with a proper DMA controller.
When copying memory from one location to another, the DMA controller will
copy in units of a given transfer length--up to 1024 words at a time. It will
read that transfer length into its internal buffer, and then write to the
destination address from that buffer. If the CPU interrupts a DMA transfer,
it will release the bus, let the CPU complete whatever it needs to do, and then
restart its transfer by writing the contents of its internal buffer and then
re-entering its read cycle again.
 
When coupled with a peripheral, the DMA controller can be configured to start
a memory copy on an interrupt line going high. Further, the controller can be
configured to issue reads from (or two) the same address instead of incrementing
the address at each clock. The DMA completes once the total number of items
specified (not the transfer length) have been transferred.
 
In each case, once the transfer is complete and the DMA unit returns to
idle, the DMA will issue an interrupt.
 
 
\chapter{Operation}\label{chap:ops}
 
The Zip CPU, and even the Zip System, is not a System on a Chip (SoC). It
1322,7 → 1288,7
CPU will immediately start executing your instructions.
 
This is, however, not how I have used the Zip CPU. I have instead used the
ZIP CPU in a more controlled environment. For me, the CPU starts in a
Zip CPU in a more controlled environment. For me, the CPU starts in a
halted state, and waits to be told to start. Further, the RESET address is a
location in RAM. After bringing up the board I am using, and further the
bus that is on it, the RAM memory is then loaded externally with the program
1333,7 → 1299,269
Eventually, I intend to place an operating system onto the ZipSystem, I'm
just not there yet.
 
The rest of this chapter examines some common programming constructs, and
how they might be applied to the Zip System.
 
\section{Example: Idle Task}
One task every operating system needs is the idle task, the task that takes
place when nothing else can run. On the Zip CPU, this task is quite simple,
and it is shown in assemble in Tbl.~\ref{tbl:idle-asm}.
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
{\tt idle\_task:} \\
& {\em ; Wait for the next interrupt, then switch to supervisor task} \\
& {\tt WAIT} \\
& {\em ; When we come back, it's because the supervisor wishes to} \\
& {\em ; wait for an interrupt again, so go back to the top.} \\
& {\tt BRA idle\_task} \\
\end{tabular}
\caption{Example Idle Loop}\label{tbl:idle-asm}
\end{center}\end{table}
When this task runs, the CPU will fill up all of the pipeline stages up the
ALU. The {\tt WAIT} instruction, upon leaving the ALU, places the CPU into
a sleep state where nothing more moves. Sure, there may be some more settling,
the pipe cache continue to read until full, other instructions may issue until
the pipeline fills, but then everything will stall. Then, once an interrupt
takes place, control passes to the supervisor task to handle the interrupt.
When control passes back to this task, it will be on the next instruction.
Since that next instruction sends us back to the top of the task, the idle
task thus does nothing but wait for an interrupt.
 
This should be the lowest priority task, the task that runs when nothing else
can. It will help lower the FPGA power usage overall---at least its dynamic
power usage.
 
\section{Example: Memory Copy}
One common operation is that of a memory move or copy. Consider the C code
shown in Tbl.~\ref{tbl:memcp-c}.
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\parbox{4in}{\begin{tabbing}
{\tt void} \= {\tt memcp(void *dest, void *src, int len) \{} \\
\> {\tt for(int i=0; i<len; i++)} \\
\> \hspace{0.2in} {\tt *dest++ = *src++;} \\
\}
\end{tabbing}}
\caption{Example Memory Copy code in C}\label{tbl:memcp-c}
\end{center}\end{table}
This same code can be translated in Zip Assembly as shown in
Tbl.~\ref{tbl:memcp-asm}.
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
memcp: \\
& {\em ; R0 = *dest, R1 = *src, R2 = LEN} \\
& {\em ; The following will operate in 17 clocks per word minus one clock} \\
& {\tt CMP 0,R2} \\
& {\tt LOD.Z -1(SP),PC} {\em ; A conditional return }\\
& {\em ; (One stall on potentially writing to PC)} \\
& {\tt LOD (R1),R3} \\
& {\em ; (4 stalls, cannot be scheduled away)} \\
& {\tt STO R3,(R2)} {\em ; (4 schedulable stalls, has no impact now)} \\
& {\tt ADD 1,R1} \\
& {\tt SUB 1,R2} \\
& {\tt BNZ loop} \\
& {\em ; (5 stalls, if branch taken, to clear and refill the pipeline)} \\
& {\tt RET} \\
\end{tabular}
\caption{Example Memory Copy code in Zip Assembly}\label{tbl:memcp-asm}
\end{center}\end{table}
This example points out several things associated with the Zip CPU. First,
a straightforward implementation of a for loop is not the fastest loop
structure. For this reason, we have placed the test to continue at the
end. Second, all pointers are {\tt void} pointers to arbitrary 32--bit
data types. The Zip CPU does not have explicit support for smaller or larger
data types, and so this memory copy cannot be applied at a byte level.
Third, we've optimized the conditional jump to a return instruction into a
conditional return instruction.
 
\section{Context Switch}
 
Fundamental to any multiprocessing system is the ability to switch from one
task to the next. In the ZipSystem, this is accomplished in one of a couple
ways. The first step is that an interrupt happens. Anytime an interrupt
happens, the CPU needs to execute the following tasks in supervisor mode:
\begin{enumerate}
\item Check for a trap instruction. That is, if the user task requested a
trap, we may not wish to adjust the context, check interrupts, or call
the scheduler. Tbl.~\ref{tbl:trap-check}
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
{\tt return\_to\_user:} \\
& {\em; The instruction before the context switch processing must} \\
& {\em; be the RTU instruction that enacted user mode in the first} \\
& {\em; place. We show it here just for reference.} \\
& {\tt RTU} \\
{\tt trap\_check:} \\
& {\tt MOV uCC,R0} \\
& {\tt TST \$TRAP,R0} \\
& {\tt BNZ swap\_out} \\
& {; \em Do something here to execute the trap} \\
& {; \em Don't need to call the scheduler, so we can just return} \\
& {\tt BRA return\_to\_user} \\
\end{tabular}
\caption{Checking for whether the user issued a TRAP instruction}\label{tbl:trap-check}
\end{center}\end{table}
shows the rudiments of this code, while showing nothing of how the
actual trap would be implemented.
You may also wish to note that the instruction before the first instruction
in our context swap {\em must be} a return to userspace instruction.
Remember, the supervisor process is re--entered where it left off. This is
different from many other processors that enter interrupt mode at some vector
or other. In this case, we always enter supervisor mode right where we last
left.\footnote{The one exception to this rule is upon reset where supervisor
mode is entered at a pre--programmed wishbone memory address.}
 
\item Capture user counters. If the operating system is keeping track of
system usage via the accounting counters, those counters need to be
copied and accumulated into some master counter at this point.
 
\item Preserve the old context. This involves pushing all the user registers
onto the user stack and then copying the resulting stack address
into the tasks task structure, as shown in Tbl.~\ref{tbl:context-out}.
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
{\tt swap\_out:} \\
& {\tt MOV -15(uSP),R1} \\
& {\tt STO R1,stack(R12)} \\
& {\tt MOV uPC,R0} \\
& {\tt STO R0,15(R1)} \\
& {\tt MOV uCC,R0} \\
& {\tt STO R0,14(R1)} \\
& {\em ; We can skip storing the stack, uSP, since it'll be stored}\\
& {\em ; elsewhere (in the task structure) }\\
& {\tt MOV uR13,R0} \\
& {\tt STO R0,13(R1)} \\
& \ldots {\em ; Need to repeat for all user registers} \\
& {\tt MOV uR0,R0} \\
& {\tt STO R0,1(R1)} \\
\end{tabular}
\caption{Example Storing User Task Context}\label{tbl:context-out}
\end{center}\end{table}
For the sake of discussion, we assume the supervisor maintains a
pointer to the current task's structure in supervisor register
{\tt R12}, and that {\tt stack} is an offset to the beginning of this
structure indicating where the stack pointer is to be kept within it.
 
For those who are still interested, the full code for this context
save can be found as an assembler macro within the assembler
include file, {\tt sys.i}.
 
\item Reset the watchdog timer. If you are using the watchdog timer, it should
be reset on a context swap, to know that things are still working.
Example code for this is shown in Tbl.~\ref{tbl:reset-watchdog}.
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
\multicolumn{2}{l}{{\tt `define WATCHDOG\_ADDRESS 32'hc000\_0002}}\\
\multicolumn{2}{l}{{\tt `define WATCHDOG\_TICKS 32'd1\_000\_000} {; \em = 10 ms}}\\
& {\tt LDI WATCHDOG\_ADDRESS,R0} \\
& {\tt LDI WATCHDOG\_TICKS,R1} \\
& {\tt STO R1,(R0)}
\end{tabular}
\caption{Example Watchdog Reset}\label{tbl:reset-watchdog}
\end{center}\end{table}
 
\item Interrupt handling. An interrupt handler within the Zip System is nothing
more than a task. At context swap time, the supervisor needs to
disable all of the interrupts that have tripped, and then enable
all of the tasks that would deal with each of these interrupts.
These can be user tasks, run at higher priority than any other user
tasks. Either way, they will need to re--enable their own interrupt
themselves, if the interrupt is still relevant.
 
An example of this master interrut handling is shown in
Tbl.~\ref{tbl:pre-handler}.
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
{\tt pre\_handler:} \\
& {\tt LDI PIC\_ADDRESS,R0 } \\
& {\em ; Start by grabbing the interrupt state from the interrupt}\\
& {\em ; controller. We'll store this into the register R7 so that }\\
& {\em ; we can keep and preserve this information for the scheduler}\\
& {\em ; to use later. }\\
& {\tt LOD (R0),R1} \\
& {\tt MOV R1,R7 } \\
& {\em ; As a next step, we need to acknowledge and disable all active}\\
& {\em ; interrupts. We'll start by calculating all of our active}\\
& {\em ; interrupts.}\\
& {\tt AND 0x07fff,R1 } \\
& {\em ; Put the active interrupts into the upper half of R1} \\
& {\tt ROL 16,R1 } \\
& {\tt LDILO 0x0ffff,R1 } \\
& {\tt AND R7,R1}\\
& {\em ; Acknowledge and disable active interrupts}\\
& {\em ; This also disables all interrupts from the controller, so}\\
& {\em ; we'll need to re-enable interrupts in general shortly } \\
& {\tt STO R1,(R0) } \\
& {\em ; We leave our active interrupt mask in R7 so the scheduler can}\\
& {\em ; release any tasks that depended upon them. } \\
\end{tabular}
\caption{Example checking for active interrupts}\label{tbl:pre-handler}
\end{center}\end{table}
 
\item Calling the scheduler. This needs to be done to pick the next task
to switch to. It may be an interrupt handler, or it may be a normal
user task. From a priority standpoint, it would make sense that the
interrupt handlers all have a higher priority than the user tasks,
and that once they have been called the user tasks may then be called
again. If no task is ready to run, run the idle task to wait for an
interrupt.
 
This suggests a minimum of four task priorities:
\begin{enumerate}
\item Interrupt handlers, executed with their interrupts disabled
\item Device drivers, executed with interrupts re-enabled
\item User tasks
\item The idle task, executed when nothing else is able to execute
\end{enumerate}
 
For our purposes here, we'll just assume that a pointer to the current
task is maintained in {\tt R12}, that a {\tt JSR scheduler} is
called, and that the next current task is likewise placed into
{\tt R12}.
 
\item Restore the new tasks context. Given that the scheduler has returned a
task that can be run at this time, the stack pointer needs to be
pulled out of the tasks task structure, placed into the user
register, and then the rest of the user registers need to be popped
back off of the stack to run this task. An example of this is
shown in Tbl.~\ref{tbl:context-in},
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
{\tt swap\_in:} \\
& {\tt LOD stack(R12),R1} \\
& {\tt MOV 15(R1),uSP} \\
& {\tt LOD 15(R1),R0} \\
& {\tt MOV R0,uPC} \\
& {\tt LOD 14(R1),R0} \\
& {\tt MOV R0,uCC} \\
& {\tt LOD 13(R1),R0} \\
& {\tt MOV R0,uR12} \\
& \ldots {\em ; Need to repeat for all user registers} \\
& {\tt LOD 1(R1),R0} \\
& {\tt MOV R0,uR0} \\
& {\tt BRA return\_to\_user} \\
\end{tabular}
\caption{Example Restoring User Task Context}\label{tbl:context-in}
\end{center}\end{table}
assuming as before that the task
pointer is found in supervisor register {\tt R12}.
As with storing the user context, the full code associated with
restoring the user context can be found in the assembler include
file, {\tt sys.i}.
 
\item Clear the userspace accounting registers. In order to keep track of
per process system usage, these registers need to be cleared before
reactivating the userspace process. That way, upon the next
interrupt, we'll know how many clocks the userspace program has
encountered, and how many instructions it was able to issue in
those many clocks.
 
\item Jump back to the instruction just before saving the last tasks context,
because that location in memory contains the return from interrupt
command that we are going to need to execute, in order to guarantee
that we return back here again.
\end{enumerate}
 
\chapter{Registers}\label{chap:regs}
 
The ZipSystem registers fall into two categories, ZipSystem internal registers
1342,7 → 1570,7
\begin{center}\begin{reglist}
PIC & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000000} & 32 & R/W & Primary Interrupt Controller \\\hline
WDT & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000001} & 32 & R/W & Watchdog Timer \\\hline
CCHE & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000002} & 32 & R/W & Manual Cache Controller \\\hline
& \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000002} & 32 & R/W & {\em (Reserved for future use)} \\\hline
CTRIC & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000003} & 32 & R/W & Secondary Interrupt Controller \\\hline
TMRA & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000004} & 32 & R/W & Timer A\\\hline
TMRB & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000005} & 32 & R/W & Timer B\\\hline
1356,6 → 1584,10
UMSTL & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc000000d} & 32 & R/W & User Stall Counter \\\hline
UPSTL & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc000000e} & 32 & R/W & User Pre--Fetch Stall Counter \\\hline
UICNT & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc000000f} & 32 & R/W & User Instruction Counter\\\hline
DMACTRL & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000010} & 32 & R/W & DMA Control Register\\\hline
DMALEN & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000011} & 32 & R/W & DMA total transfer length\\\hline
DMASRC & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000012} & 32 & R/W & DMA source address\\\hline
DMADST & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0000013} & 32 & R/W & DMA destination address\\\hline
% Cache & \scalebox{0.8}{\tt 0xc0100000} & & & Base address of the Cache memory\\\hline
\end{reglist}
\caption{Zip System Internal/Peripheral Registers}\label{tbl:zpregs}
1491,6 → 1723,49
Operating System will read the timers back off, to determine how much of the
CPU the process had consumed.
 
The final peripheral to discuss is the DMA controller. This controller
has four registers. Of these four, the length, source and destination address
registers should need no further explanation. They are full 32--bit registers
specifying the entire transfer length, the starting address to read from, and
the starting address to write to. The registers can be written to when the
DMA is idle, and read at any time. The control register, however, will need
some more explanation.
 
The bit allocation of the control register is shown in Tbl.~\ref{tbl:dmacbits}.
\begin{table}\begin{center}
\begin{bitlist}
31 & R & DMA Active\\\hline
30 & R & Wishbone error, transaction aborted (cleared on any write)\\\hline
29 & R/W & Set to '1' to prevent the controller from incrementing the source address, '0' for normal memory copy. \\\hline
28 & R/W & Set to '0' to prevent the controller from incrementing the
destination address, '0' for normal memory copy. \\\hline
27 \ldots 16 & W & The DMA Key. Write a 12'hfed to these bits to start the
activate any DMA transfer. \\\hline
27 & R & Always reads '0', to force the deliberate writing of the key. \\\hline
26 \ldots 16 & R & Indicates the number of items in the transfer buffer that
have yet to be written. \\\hline
15 & R/W & Set to '1' to trigger on an interrupt, or '0' to start immediately
upon receiving a valid key.\\\hline
14\ldots 10 & R/W & Select among one of 32~possible interrupt lines.\\\hline
9\ldots 0 & R/W & Intermediate transfer length minus one. Thus, to transfer
one item at a time set this value to 0. To transfer 1024 at a time,
set it to 1024.\\\hline
\end{bitlist}
\caption{DMA Control Register Bits}\label{tbl:dmacbits}
\end{center}\end{table}
This control register has been designed so that the common case of memory
access need only set the key and the transfer length. Hence, writing a
\hbox{32'h0fed03ff} to the control register will start any memory transfer.
On the other hand, if you wished to read from a serial port (constant address)
and put the result into a buffer every time a word was available, you
might wish to write \hbox{32'h2fed8000}--this assumes, of course, that you
have a serial port wired to the zero bit of this interrupt control. (The
DMA controller does not use the interrupt controller, and cannot clear
interrupts.) As a third example, if you wished to write to an external
FIFO anytime it was less than half full (had fewer than 512 items), and
interrupt line 2 indicated this condition, you might wish to issue a
\hbox{32'h1fed8dff} to this port.
 
\section{Debug Port Registers}
Accessing the Zip System via the debug port isn't as straight forward as
accessing the system via the wishbone bus. The debug port itself has been
1505,7 → 1780,7
11 & W & Command clear PF cache\\\hline
10 & R/W & Command HALT, Set to '1' to halt the CPU\\\hline
9 & R & Stall Status, '1' if CPU is busy\\\hline
8 & R/W & Step Command, set to '1' to step the CPU\\\hline
8 & R/W & Step Command, set to '1' to step the CPU, also sets the halt bit\\\hline
7 & R & Interrupt Request \\\hline
6 & R/W & Command RESET \\\hline
5\ldots 0 & R/W & Debug Register Address \\\hline
1557,7 → 1832,7
\caption{Debug Register Addresses}\label{tbl:dbgaddrs}
\end{center}\end{table}
Primarily, these ``registers'' include access to the entire CPU register
set, as well as the 16~internal peripherals. To read one of these registers
set, as well as the internal peripherals. To read one of these registers
once the address is set, simply issue a read from the data port. To write
one of these registers or peripheral ports, simply write to the data port
after setting the proper address.
1646,7 → 1921,7
 
This core is based upon the Basys--3 development board sold by Digilent.
The Basys--3 development board contains one external 100~MHz clock, which is
sufficient to run the ZIP CPU core.
sufficient to run the Zip CPU core.
\begin{table}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\begin{clocklist}
1712,6 → 1987,340
detail. Finally, the Zip System produces one external interrupt whenever
the CPU halts to wait for the debugger.
 
\chapter{Initial Assessment}\label{chap:assessment}
 
Having now worked with the Zip CPU for a while, it is worth offering an
honest assessment of how well it works and how well it was designed. At the
end of this assessment, I will propose some changes that may take place in a
later version of this Zip CPU to make it better.
 
\section{The Good}
\begin{itemize}
\item The Zip CPU is light weight and fully featured as it exists today. For
anyone who wishes to build a general purpose CPU and then to
experiment with building and adding particular features, the Zip CPU
makes a good starting point--it is fairly simple. Modifications should
be simple enough.
\item As an estimate of the ``weight'' of this implementation, the CPU has
cost me less than 150 hours to implement from its inception.
\item The Zip CPU was designed to be an implementable soft core that could be
placed within an FPGA, controlling actions internal to the FPGA. It
fits this role rather nicely. It does not fit the role of a system on
a chip very well, but then it was never intended to be a system on a
chip but rather a system within a chip.
\item The extremely simplified instruction set of the Zip CPU was a good
choice. Although it does not have many of the commonly used
instructions, PUSH, POP, JSR, and RET among them, the simplified
instruction set has demonstrated an amazing versatility. I will contend
therefore and for anyone who will listen, that this instruction set
offers a full and complete capability for whatever a user might wish
to do with two exceptions: bytewise character access and accelerated
floating-point support.
\item This simplified instruction set is easy to decode.
\item The simplified bus transactions (32-bit words only) were also very easy
to implement.
\item The novel approach of having a single interrupt vector, which just
brings the CPU back to the instruction it left off at within the last
interrupt context doesn't appear to have been that much of a problem.
If most modern systems handle interrupt vectoring in software anyway,
why maintain hardware support for it?
\item My goal of a high rate of instructions per clock may not be the proper
measure. For example, if instructions are being read from a SPI flash
device, such as is common among FPGA implementations, these same
instructions may suffer stalls of between 64 and 128 cycles per
instruction just to read the instruction from the flash. Executing the
instruction in a single clock cycle is no longer the appropriate
measure. At the same time, it should be possible to use the DMA
peripheral to copy instructions from the FLASH to a temporary memory
location, after which they may be executed at a single instruction
cycle per access again.
\end{itemize}
 
\section{The Not so Good}
\begin{itemize}
\item While one of the stated goals was to use a small amount of logic,
3k~LUTs isn't that impressively small. Indeed, it's really much
too expensive when compared against other 8 and 16-bit CPUs that have
less than 1k LUTs.
 
Still, \ldots it's not bad, it's just not astonishingly good.
 
\item The fact that the instruction width equals the bus width means that the
instruction fetch cycle will always be interfering with any load or
store memory operation, with the only exception being if the
instruction is already in the cache. {\em This has become the
fundamental limit on the speed and performance of the CPU!}
Those familiar with the Von--Neumann approach of sharing a bus
between data and instructions will not be surprised by this assessment.
 
This could be fixed in one of three ways: the instruction set
architecture could be modified to handle Very Long Instruction Words
(VLIW) so that each 32--bit word would encode two or more instructions,
the instruction fetch bus width could be increased from 32--bits to
64--bits or more, or the instruction bus could be separated from the
data bus. Any and all of these approaches would increase the overall
LUT count.
 
\item The (non-existant) floating point unit was an after-thought, isn't even
built as a potential option, and most likely won't support the full
IEEE standard set of FPU instructions--even for single point precision.
This (non-existant) capability would benefit the most from an
out-of-order execution capability, which the Zip CPU does not have.
 
Still, sharing FPU registers with the main register set was a good
idea and worth preserving, as it simplifies context swapping.
 
Perhaps this really isn't a problem, but rather a feature. By not
implementing FPU instructions, the Zip CPU maintains a lower LUT count
than it would have if it did implement these instructions.
 
\item The CPU has no character support. This is both good and bad.
Realistically, the CPU works just fine without it. Characters can be
supported as subsets of 32-bit words without any problem. Practically,
though, it will make compiling non-Zip CPU code difficult--especially
anything that assumes sizeof(int)=4*sizeof(char), or that tries to
create unions with characters and integers and then attempts to
reference the address of the characters within that union.
 
\item The Zip CPU does not support a data cache. One can still be built
externally, but this is a limitation of the CPU proper as built.
Further, under the theory of the Zip CPU design (that of an embedded
soft-core processor within an FPGA, where any ``address'' may reference
either memory or a peripheral that may have side-effects), any data
cache would need to be based upon an initial knowledge of whether or
not it is supporting memory (cachable) or peripherals. This knowledge
must exist somewhere, and that somewhere is currently (and by design)
external to the CPU.
 
This may also be written off as a ``feature'' of the Zip CPU, since
the addition of a data cache can greatly increase the LUT count of
a soft core.
 
\item Many other instruction sets offer three operand instructions, whereas
the Zip CPU only offers two operand instructions. This means that it
takes the Zip CPU more instructions to do many of the same operations.
The good part of this is that it gives the Zip CPU a greater amount of
flexibility in its immediate operand mode, although that increased
flexibility isn't necessarily as valuable as one might like.
 
\item The Zip CPU does not currently detect and trap on either illegal
instructions or bus errors. Attempts to access non--existent
memory quietly return erroneous results, rather than halting the
process (user mode) or halting or resetting the CPU (supervisor mode).
 
\item The Zip CPU doesn't support out of order execution. I suppose it could
be modified to do so, but then it would no longer be the ``simple''
and low LUT count CPU it was designed to be. The two primary results
are that 1) loads may unnecessarily stall the CPU, even if other
things could be done while waiting for the load to complete, 2)
bus errors on stores will never be caught at the point of the error,
and 3) branch prediction becomes more difficult.
 
\item Although switching to an interrupt context in the Zip CPU design doesn't
require a tremendous swapping of registers, in reality it still
does--since any task swap still requires saving and restoring all
16~user registers. That's a lot of memory movement just to service
an interrupt.
 
\item The Zip CPU is by no means generic: it will never handle addresses
larger than 32-bits (16GB) without a complete and total redesign.
This may limit its utility as a generic CPU in the future, although
as an embedded CPU within an FPGA this isn't really much of a limit
or restriction.
 
\item While the Zip CPU has its own assembler, it has no linker and does not
(yet) support a compiler. The standard C library is an even longer
shot. My dream of having binutils and gcc support has not been
realized and at this rate may not be realized. (I've been intimidated
by the challenge everytime I've looked through those codes.)
 
\item While the Wishbone Bus (B4) supports a pipelined mode with single cycle
execution, the Zip CPU is unable to exploit this parallelism. Instead,
apart from the DMA and the pipelined prefetch, all loads and stores
are single wishbone bus operations requiring a minimum of 3 clocks.
(In practice, this has turned into 7-clocks.)
 
\iffalse
\item There is no control over whether or not an instruction sets the
condition codes--certain instructions always set the condition codes,
other instructions never set them. This effectively limits conditional
instructions to a single instruction only (with two or more
instructions as an exception), as the first instruction that sets
condition codes will break the condition code chain.
 
{\em (A proposed change below address this.)}
 
\item Using the CC register as a trap address was a bad idea--it limits the CC
registers ability to be used in future expansion, such as by adding
exception indication flags: bus error, floating point exception, etc.
 
{\em (This can be changed by a different O/S implementation of the trap
instruction.)}
\item The current implementation suffers from too many stalls on any
branch--even if the branch is known early on.
 
{\em (This is addressed in proposals below.)}
% Addressed, 20150918
 
\item In a similar fashion, a switch to interrupt context forces the pipeline
to be cleared, whereas it might make more sense to just continue
executing the instructions already in the pipeline while the prefetch
stage is working on switching to the interrupt context.
 
{\em (Also addressed in proposals below.)}
% This should happen so rarely that it is not really a problem
\fi
 
\end{itemize}
 
\section{The Next Generation}
This section could also be labeled as my ``To do'' list.
 
Given the feedback listed above, perhaps its time to consider what changes could be made to improve the Zip CPU in the future. I offer the following as proposals:
 
\begin{itemize}
\item {\bf Remove the low LUT goal.} It wasn't really achieved, and the
proposals below will only increase the amount of logic the Zip CPU
requires. While I expect that the Zip CPU will always be somewhat
of a light weight, it will never be the smallest kid on the block.
 
I'm actually struggling with this idea. The whole goal of the Zip
CPU was to be light weight. Wouldn't it make more sense to create and
maintain options whereby it would remain lightweight? For example, if
the process accounting registers are anything but light weight, why
keep them? Why not instead make some compile flags that just turn them
off, keeping the CPU lightweight? The same holds for the prefetch
cache.
 
\iffalse
\item {\bf Adjust the Zip CPU so that conditional instructions do not set
flags}, although they may explicitly set condition codes if writing
to the CC register.
 
This is a simple change to the core, and may show up in new releases.
% Fixed, 20150918
\fi
 
\item The `{\tt .V}' condition was never used in any code other than my test
code. Suggest changing it to a `{\tt .LE}' condition, which seems
to be more useful.
 
\iffalse
\item Add in an {\bf unpredictable branch delay slot}, so that on any branch
the delay slot may or may not be executed before the branch.
Instructions that do not depend upon the branch, and that should be
executed were the branch not taken, could be placed into the delay
slot. Thus, if the branch isn't taken, we wouldn't suffer the stall,
whereas it wouldn't affect the timing of the branch if taken. It would
just do something irrelevant.
 
% Changes made, 20150918, make this option no longer relevant
 
\item {\bf Re-engineer Branch Processing.} There's no reason why a {\tt BRA}
instruction should create five stall cycles. The decode stage, plus
the prefetch engine, should be able to drop this number of stalls via
better branch handling.
 
Indeed, this could turn into a simple means of branch prediction:
if {\tt BRA} suffered a single stall only, whereas {\tt BRA.C}
suffered five stalls, then {\tt BRA.!C} followed by {\tt BRA} would
be faster than a {\tt BRA.C} instruction. This would then allow a
compiler to do explicit branch optimizations.
 
Of course, longer branches using {\tt ADD X,PC} would still not be
optimized.
 
% DONE: 20150918 -- to include the ADD X,PC instructions
 
\item {\bf Request bus access for Load/Store two cycles earlier.} The problem
here is the contention for the bus between the memory unit and the
prefetch unit. Currently, the memory unit must ask the prefetch
unit to release the bus if it is in the middle of a bus cycle. At this
point, the prefetch drops the {\tt STB} line on the next clock and must
then wait for the last {\tt ACK} before releasing the bus. If the
request takes one clock, dropping the strobe line the next, waiting
for an acknowledgement takes another, and then the bus must be idle
for one cycle before starting again, these extra cycles add up.
It should be possible to tell the prefetch stage to give up the bus
as soon as the decoder knows the instruction will need the bus.
Indeed, if done in the decode stage, this might drop the seven cycle
access down by two cycles.
 
% FIXED: 20150918
\fi
 
\item {\bf Consider a more traditional Instruction Cache.} The current
pipelined instruction cache just reads a window of memory into
its cache. If the CPU leaves that window, the entire cache is
invalidated. A more traditional cache, however, might allow
common subroutines to stay within the cache without invalidating the
entire cache structure.
 
\iffalse
\item {\bf Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW).} Now, to speed up operation, I
propose that the Zip CPU instruction set be modified towards a Very
Long Instruction Word (VLIW) implementation. In this implementation,
an instruction word may contain either one or two separate
instructions. The first instruction would take up the high order bits,
the second optional instruction the lower 16-bits. Further, I propose
that any of the ALU instructions (SUB through LSR) automatically have
a second instruction whenever their operand `B' is a register, and use
the full 20-bit immediate if not. This will effectively eliminate the
register plus immediate mode for all of these instructions.
 
This is the minimal required change to increase the number of
instructions per clock cycle. Other changes would need to take place
as well to support this. These include:
\begin{itemize}
\item Instruction words containing two instructions would take two
clocks to complete, while requiring only a single cycle
instruction fetch.
\item Instructions preceded by a label in the asseembler must always
start in the high order word.
\item VLIW's, once started, must always execute to completion. The
upper word may set the PC, the lower word may not. Regardless
of whether the upper word sets the PC, the lower word must
still be guaranteed to complete before the PC changes. On any
switch to (or from) interrupt context, both instructions must
complete or none of the instructions in the word shall
complete prior to the switch.
\item STEP commands and BREAK instructions will only take place after
the entire word is executed.
\end{itemize}
 
If done well, the assembler should be able to handle these changes
with the biggest impacts to the user being increased performance and
a loss of the register plus immediate ALU modes. (These weren't really
relevant for the XOR, OR, AND, etc. operations anyway.) Machine code
compatibility will not be maintained.
 
A proposed secondary instruction set might consist of: a four bit
operand (any of the prior instructions would be supported, with some
exceptions such as moves to and from user registers while in
supervisor mode not being supported), a 4-bit register result (PC not
allowed), a 3-bit conditional (identical to the conditional for the
upper word), a single bit for whether or not an immediate is present
or not, followed by either a 4-bit register or a 4-bit signed
immediate. The multiply instruction would steal the immediate flag to
be used as a sign indication, forcing both operands to be registers
without any immediate offsets.
 
{\em Initial conversion of several library functions to this secondary
instruction set has demonstrated little to no gain. The problem was
that the new instruction set was made by joining a rarely used
instruction (ALU with register and not immediate) with a more common
instruction. The utility was then limited by the utility of the rare
instrction, which limited the impact of the entire approach. }
\else
\item {\bf Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW).} The goal here would be to
create a new instruction set whereby two instructions would be encoded
in each 32--bit word. While this may speed up
CPU operation, it would necessitate an instruction redesign.
\fi
 
\end{itemize}
 
% Appendices
% Index
\end{document}

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