Appendix D

Mapping Control to Hardware

A custom format such as this is slave to the architecture of the hardware and the instruction set it serves. The format must strike a proper compromise between ROM size, ROM-output decoding, circuitry size, and machine execution rate.

Jim McKevit, et al. 8086 design report, 1997

  • D.1 Introduction D-3
  • D.2 Implementing Combinational Control Units D-4
  • D.3 Implementing Finite-State Machine Control D-8
  • D.4 Implementing the Next-State Function with a Sequencer D-22
  • D.5 Translating a Microprogram to Hardware D-28
  • D.6 Concluding Remarks D-32
  • D.7 Exercises D-33

D.1 Introduction

Control typically has two parts: a combinational part that lacks state and a sequential control unit that handles sequencing and the main control ...

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