Designing a Java microcontroller to specific applications

Abstract

Stack machines are known to provide code compactness and simple execution engines-important features when implementing small devices. This paper discusses some benefits, problems and open questions by using a stack based microcontroller to support native execution of Java bytecode. The discussion is based on our experience in designing a Java ASIP in FPGA, in order to explore software compatibility, reconfiguration capability and the small size of optimized microcontrollers to implement specific applications. The paper also presents the synthesized machine architecture and shows some area and speed results.