Processor Description Languages

102 CHAPTER 5 LISA: A Uniform ADL for Embedded Processor

processor design is viewed as the collection of two iterative tasks, exploration,and

implementation. The role of exploration is to indicate the performance of the pro-

cessor while executing a given target application. The performance is measured by

cycle count during high-level instruction-set simulation. The role of implementa-

tion is to provide a processor description (e.g., synthesizable RTL) so that it can be

processed with commercial physical synthesis flow.The RTL implementation of the

processor can also be used to derive the performance estimation in terms of power,

area, and clock frequency ...