Experiments in Automatic Microcode Generation

• Published in: IEEE transactions on computers Vol. C-32; no. 6; pp. 557 - 569
• Main Authors: SHERAGA, R. J, GIESER, J. L
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01-06-1983; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Automatic microcode generation; Computer science; control theory; systems; Exact sciences and technology; high level microprogramming languages; horizontally microprogrammed processors; Language processing and microprogramming; microprogram compilers; microprogramming; Software
• ISSN: 0018-9340; 1557-9956
• DOI: 10.1109/TC.1983.1676278

A procedure is described which permits applications problems coded in a higher level language to be compiled to microcode for horizontally microprogrammed processors. An experimental language has been designed which is suitable for expressing computationally oriented problems for such processors in a distributed processing environment. Source programs are compiled first to a machine independent intermediate language and then to a machine dependence form consisting of elementary microoperations, with optimizations performed during each step. The microoperations are then compacted into executable microinstructions for a specific target machine. The procedure has been implemented for experimental purposes and used to compile several different types of applications programs. The experimental results are presented with an interpretation and analysis, along with recommendations for future study.