This project is about improving the design and usability of embedded processors, which historically started with DSPs. For DSPs alone, the market is over US$3 billion. DSPs have evolved along a different path than general-purpose microprocessors because they have been targeted at applications where both low cost and high performance are required. To meet these requirements, it has been necessary to program DSPs using assembly language programming, making the task much more tedious than using a high-level programming language such as C. As the types of applications targeted by DSP and embedded processors grows in size, especially with the recent interest in multimedia applications, the use of assembly language is an impediment to the need to rapidly develop new products. Portability and the maintenance of code are also important issues that are much easier to handle when using high-level languages.
General-purpose microprocessors were also originally programmed using a low-level assembly language, but it is now possible to achieve comparable performance using compilers, to the point that it is now rare to see anyone programming with assembly language. The key insight was to realize that performance was not just a function of the hardware design, but that the hardware must be designed in conjunction with the compiler. This is the design philosophy being used in this project. Our goal is to develop embedded processors that can be efficiently programmed using the C programming language.
The approach we are using is to leverage the optimizing compiler technology that is currently being used in the general-purpose world and then adding new optimizations that are specific to embedded processors. We have also developed simulation systems that allow us to study the quality of code being generated by our compilers. Based on these results, we are studying new embedded architectures with the goal of building and demonstrating an embedded processor and compiler that has performance and cost at least as good as existing commercial processors but with the advantage that the programming is done using C.