VHDL Implementation of ARM Cortex-M0 Laboratory for Graduate Engineering Students

Abstract

Currently most of undergraduate and graduate level laboratory courses on microprocessor design belong to old curriculum and use extremely aged non-pipelined architectures which has no real connection to modern contemporary processors. Laboratory boards based on classic processors such as Intel 8051, 8085/86, Motorola 68000 are kept being used due to ease of teaching and simplicity of the architectures. In this paper a VHDL implementation of ARM Cortex-M0 which is a common pipelined processor used widely in modern embedded systems (such as STM32F microcontroller which uses ARM processor cores) is proposed. The implementation process divided into several steps which then can be used as a series of laboratory modules for teaching advanced microprocessor laboratory courses in universities. The core employs a 3-stage pipeline and implements all 16-bit Thumb and six 32-bit instructions all belonging to ARMv6-M architecture. Low cost FPGA development boards can be used to implement the design and conduct the proposed lab sessions.