Supporting FPGA microprocessors through retargetable software tools

Abstract

FPGA systems outperform many ASIC and supercomputer systems through effective use of the reconfigurable resource. Reusing design effort across different applications requires a standard, flexible software environment. Driving FPGA systems from ANSI C is possible using 1 cc (an ANSI C compiler) targeted at an FPGA system and dasm (a retargetable, flexible assembler). The compiler supports custom hardware capabilities of FPGA systems, as well as all constructs of C. The assembler reads instruction definitions at assemble time, allowing the user to add new custom hardware functions which dasm can assemble correctly to an instruction stream the hardware executes. A source code debugger has been implemented for this system.