Hardware-Software-Codesign of application specific microcontrollers with the ASM environment

A new CAD system for generation of application specific microcontrollers is presented. It is based on a properly defined architecture model and consists of a set of tools for instruction set description, HW-SW-cosimulation of the processor and the application software, compiler generation, datapath and controlpath synthesis, and datapath animation. One of these tools, the MicroDebugger, follows a new approach of HW-SW-cosimulation particulary matching the problems of microcontroller design. The system proved it's effectiveness throughout numerous designs including a small multitasking RISC for embedded applications.