Programmable Microcontroller Peripherals

Abstract

This thesis is a continuation of work done in a specialization project. The result from the preliminary work have been used to implement a programmable peripheral processor in HDL that can replace non-programmable hardware modules. The implemented solution have then been tested to find out if it is capable of doing the most basic operations that a UART protocol require to do parallel-to-serial and serial-to-parallel conversions. The results of the implementation and testing have been analysed and the performance, area and power consumption have been presented. The resulting performance and area have also been compared to traditional hardware solutions.

The results from the tests demonstrates that the presented peripheral processor is capable of doing the basic operations that is required to do parallel-to-serial and serial-to-parallel conversions. However, the area of the peripheral processor is significantly larger than the total area of multiple non-programmable hardware modules. The result of this is that the cost of utilizing a peripheral processor will be greater than with existing solutions.