Automatic synthesis of microcontrollers

A method is proposed for automating the design of a microcontroller from a register transfer level description of a digital system. This method designs the format of the control word, determines the timing of branch decisions, and specifies the content of the microprogram. A data structure is introduced which supports some heuristic optimization of the design. The goal of the design method is to produce correct designs that are partially optimized with a practical amount of computing effort. An example is given to show how the method works.