NanoRisc

Abstract

This report gives a short introduction of the Norwegian wireless electronics company Chipcon AS, and goes on to account for the state of the art of small IP processor cores. It then describes the NanoRisc, a powerful processor developed in this project to replace hardware logic modules in future Chipcon designs. The architecture and a VHDL implementation of the NanoRisc is described and discussed, as well as an assembler and instruction set simulator developed for the NanoRisc. The results of this development work are promising; synthesis shows that the NanoRisc is capable of powerful 16-bit data moving and processing at 50 MHz in an 18nm process while requiring less than 4500 gates. The report concludes that the NanoRisc, and none of the existing IP cores studied, satisfies the requirements for hardware logic replacement in Chipcon transceivers.