This release marks a major mile-stone in the AEMB project. It is 99.9% EDK3.2 software compatible with the addition of get/put, barrel-shift and multiply instructions. It has stable interrupt support for working with external I/O devices. Also, it features a major rewrite of the core to fix all the previous bugs found.

This release marks a major mile-stone in the AEMB project. It is 99.9% EDK3.2 software compatible with the addition of get/put, barrel-shift and multiply instructions. It has stable interrupt support for working with external I/O devices. Also, it features a major rewrite of the core to fix all the previous bugs found.

Main Changes

  1. Interrupt Support.
    Interrupt support is positive-level triggered. The pipeline will check for the first available atomic instruction and trigger the interrupt on it. Non atomic instructions include IMMI and delayed branches. This wait incurs a maximum penalty of up to 3 cycles typically.
  2. Support for get/put instructions.
    These two instructions provide the AEMB with an alternative I/O path. This is implemented as an independent minimal WISHBONE bus. It can be connected to I/O devices to provide a serial link, or used for inter-processor communications with other cores (e.g. hardware accelerators).
  3. Support for barrel-shift and multiply instructions.
    These instructions are implemented as parameterisable functional units. Both of these provide single-cycle operations and speed up software significantly. They increase the size of the core and slow down the clock speed slightly.
  4. Bug fixes and optimisations.
    All previously reported bugs have been addressed and closed. Some optimisations were done to increase performance. Check the patches for more recent updates or get the sources directly from CVS for the development version.

Support
Please continue to support the development of this project by donating via PayPal. A link is provided on the download page.

Categories: Announcement

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