RXv2 processor core for low-power microcontrollers

Abstract

We have developed a new processor architecture for microcontrollers which integrate high-capacity FLASH memory and many peripheral functional modules. This paper describes processor core architecture for low-power microcontrollers and our approach for reducing energy consumption with instruction fetch mechanisms. A large fraction of the total power budget of the microcontroller is the energy consumption in the path from the FLASH memory to the processor. An enhanced instruction set and pipeline structure provide an effective balance between high code density, power consumption performance and high processing performance with an novel prefetching unit to reduce the number of memory accesses.