Designing 16-bit RISC Microprocessor Soft Core

Since Intel produced the first microprocessor, 4004, in 1971, microprocessors have been developing at a striking speed. The development of microprocessor shows the up-to-the-minute technology of IC design and manufacturing, and also reflects the IC design ability. Since 1997, China has been able to design microprocessors that have independent Intellectual Property, however, the design ability and manufacturing process of China still has a very big difference compared to foreign countries.A 16-bit RISC microprocessor soft core is designed, and the instruction system, controller, bus and clock are studied. The main work includes the deep study of microprocessor theory, the system-level design of the soft core that is performed based on it, the system function definition and partition, the design of all the functional modules. After completing system-level and algorithm-level designs, the RTL implementations of each module are performed and the functional simulation and FPGA verification are carried out on the RTL codes. At last, the RTL codes are synthesized with Synopsys' Design Compiler and the gat-level netlist is gotten. The microprocessor design is completed.The soft core design of 16-bit microprocessor realizes all the required functions, which are verified with FPGA test bench (for example, the controller is implemented with hard-wired logic). With the design of the microprocessor some design ideas are implemented and some valuable experiences are accumulated.