FPGA Implementation of ARM Processor

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Nowadays application specific soft processor cores are gaining importance for FPGA based embedded application in which user can configure the processor as per requirement. The architectural simplicity of ARM processors makes them suitable for low power applications. Hardware description languages (HDLs) are commonly used to construct hardware system. FPGA provides reconfigurable platform, so reuse of the design is a common practice to improve the productivity nowadays. In this paper the data processing instructions of ARM processor are implemented using Very high speed integrated circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) language and verified by applying test bench on Xilinx's Spartan III based FPGA. KEYWORDS: ARM, VHDL, FPGA, data processing instructions. I.INTRODUCTION The Arm processor has large uniform register file, load/store architecture, where data-processing operations only operate on register contents, not directly on memory contents. Simple addressing modes, with all load/store addresses being determined from register contents and instruction fields only Uniform and fixed-length instruction fields to simplify instruction decode [4] The FPGA based design reduces time to market & adds design flexibility and adaptability with optimal device utilization and conserving both less board space and system power, which is often not the possible in every case of ASIC chips. II. RELATED WORK The hardware debugging technology is integrated in ARM processor so that programmers can view what is happening during execution of code by processor. With this programmers can resolve issues very quickly and reduce time to market and overall development cost. The ARM is not pure RISC architecture because of various limitations of applications in embedded system. Nowadays Speed is not major constraint but power consumption and cost effective solutions are also playing vital rol