ESi-RISC

eSi-RISC is a configurable CPU architecture from EnSilica. It is available in three implementations: the eSi-1600, eSi-3200 and eSi-3250.^[1] The eSi-1600 features a 16-bit data-path, while the eSi-3200 and eSi-3250 feature 32-bit data-paths. Each of these processors is licensed as soft IP cores, suitable for integrating into both ASICs and FPGAs.^[2]

Architecture

The main features of the eSi-RISC architecture are:

eSi-3250 SoC architecture

• RISC-like load/store architecture.
• Configurable 16 or 32-bit data-path.
• Instructions are encoded in either 16 or 32-bits.
• 8, 16 or 32 general purpose registers.
• 0, 8, 16 or 32 vector registers.
• 0 to 8 accumulators.
• Up to 32 external interrupts.
• Configurable instruction set including support for integer, floating-point and fixed-point arithmetic.
• Optional support for user-defined instructions, such as cryptographic acceleration .^[3]
• Optional caches (Configurable size and associtivity).
• Optional MMU supporting both memory protection and dynamic address translation.
• AMBA AXI, AHB and APB bus interfaces.
• Memory mapped I/O.
• 5-stage pipeline.
• Hardware JTAG debug.

While there are many different 16 or 32-bit Soft microprocessor IP cores available, eSi-RISC is the only architecture licensed as an IP core that has both 16 and 32-bit implementations.

Unlike in other RISC architectures supporting both 16 and 32-bit instructions, such as ARM/Thumb or MIPS/MIPS-16, 16 and 32-bit instructions in the eSi-RISC architecture can be freely intermixed, rather than having different modes where either all 16-bit instructions or all 32-bit instructions are executed. This improves code density without compromising performance. The 16-bit instructions support two register operands in the lower 16 registers, whereas the 32-bit instructions support three register operands and access to all 32 registers.

eSi-RISC includes support for Multiprocessing. Implementations have included up to seven eSi-3250's on a single chip.^[4]

Toolchain

The eSi-RISC toolchain is based on combination of a port of the GNU toolchain and the Eclipse IDE.^[5] This includes:

• GCC - C/C++ compiler.
• Binutils - Assembler, linker and binary utilities.
• GDB - Debugger.
• Eclipse - Integrated Development Environment.

The C library is Newlib and the C++ library is Libstdc++. Ported RTOSes include MicroC/OS-II, FreeRTOS, ERIKA Enterprise ^[6] and Phoenix-RTOS ^[7]

References

External links

• EnSilica's eSi-RISC homepage