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| Author(s): |
Rafael Auler
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Computação |
| Defense date: | 2016-09-23 |
| Examining board members: |
Edson Borin;
Philippe Olivier Alexandre Navaux;
Fernando Magno Quintão Pereira;
Rodolfo Jardim de Azevedo;
Sandro Rigo
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| Advisor: | Edson Borin |
| Abstract | |
OpenISA is designed as the interface of processors that aim to be highly flexible. This is achieved by means of three strategies: first, the ISA is empirically chosen to be easily translated to others, providing software flexibility in case a physical OpenISA processor is not available. Second, the ISA is not a concrete ISA nor a virtual ISA, but a hybrid one with the capability of admitting modifications to opcodes without impacting backwards compatibility. This mechanism allows future versions of the ISA to have real changes instead of simple extensions of previous versions, a common problem with concrete ISAs such as the x86. Third, the use of a permissive license allows the ISA to be freely used by any party interested in the project. In this PhD. thesis, we focus on the user-level instructions of OpenISA. The thesis discusses (1) ISA alternatives, program distribution alternatives and the impact of each choice, (2) important features of OpenISA to achieve its goals and (3) provides a thorough evaluation of the chosen ISA with respect to emulation performance on two popular host CPUs, one from Intel and another from ARM. We conclude that the version of OpenISA presented here can preserve close-to-native performance when translated to other hosts, working as a promising model for next-generation, flexible ISAs that can be easily extended while preserving backwards compatibility. Furthermore, we show how this can also be a program distribution format at user-level (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 11/09630-1 - Efficient emulation techniques for the Open-ISA instruction set architecture |
| Grantee: | Rafael Auler |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |