Customizing controller instruction sets for application-specific architectures

Previous work has proposed the "Systems Integrating Modules with Predefined Physical Links" (SIMPPL) architectural framework as one possible method to shorten the design cycle by utilizing a light weight programmable controller (SIMPPL Controller) as the system-level interface. This paper presents a study of how much improvement in area, power, and performance can be achieved through the customization of the SIMPPL Controller's instruction set. Furthermore, we have created a tool to automatically generate the HDL for SIMPPL Controllers with a user specified instruction set. Our study on an FPGA platform has shown that using a customized SIMPPL Controller with a minimal instruction set results in: an area reduction of 42%, a performance increase of 16%, and a power reduction of 10%.