README.md

siiCpu

1. Design Specifications

Here is an introduction to siiCpu

• The CPU supports the complete rv32im instruction set, which can execute basic arithmetic, logic, shift, branch, jump, integer multiplication, integer division and other instructions.

• The CPU supports privileged instructions, which can implement system calls and exception handling, and only supports machine mode here.

• The CPU supports the processing of interrupts and exceptions, can respond to external interrupts and internal exceptions, and when an interrupt exception occurs, the hardware is responsible for recording the cause of the exception, the pc at the time of the exception, etc, and automatically jumps to the TRAP entry program pointed to by mtvec. Software is responsible for context protection, and hardware returns to continue executing the original program after receiving the mret instruction.

• The multiplier is structured using Radix-4 Booth Algorithm and Wallace tree. Radix-4 Booth Algorithm reduces partial products generation to 1/2. The wallace tree uses a carry save-adders (CSA), which compresses the partial product terms by a ratio of 3:2 to speed up the addition process.

• The number of cycles required by the multi-cycle divider is determined by the divisor and dividend. In RISC-V, dividing by zero or overflowing does not produce an exception, and the division operation is finished in a single cycle. In other cases, the first nonzero value of the dividend is judged, and then the first quotient is calculated.

• The CPU includes 32 general-purpose registers for storing operands and results, with the x0 register fixed at 0.

• The CPU includes basic CSR registers for storing control and status information, such as interrupt enable (mie), interrupt suspend (mip), exception code (mcause), etc.

• The CPU is designed with a five-stage pipeline, including fetch, decode, execute, memory access, and write back, connected by pipeline registers.

• The CPU uses simple static branch prediction. For conditional branch instructions, the immediate number in the instruction is used to determine whether to jump. If the jump address is after the instruction, the jump occurs. For unconditional jump instructions, it is predicted that they always jump. Since the jr ra instruction is a function return instruction and occurs frequently, an interface is directly designed to read the ra register in the general-purpose register.(deleted)

• The CPU adopts the Harvard architecture, and the instruction and data storage are separated and accessed by itcm and spm, respectively. Single-cycle reading improves memory access efficiency.

• The data width of itcm and spm is 32 bits, and one word of data can be read or written at a time. The capacity of itcm and spm can be configured as needed.

• At the memory access module can access the bus and decide whether to access the spm or the bus by address decoding, where the bus satisfies the AHB-lite protocol.

• CLINT is used to generate software interrupts and timer interrupts. There is an msip register, which is triggered by software, and there is a 64-bit mtime timer, which is counted by a low-frequency clock and triggers the timer interrupt when its value is equal to the value in the mtimecmp register. All three registers can be read and written by the bus.

• Supports UART transmission, 115200 baud rate, transmission based on one start bit, eight data bits, one odd parity bit and one end bit. Since the design is a 32-bit processor, each 32-bit data is transmitted in four times. At the same time, there is a 32-bit FIFO with a depth of 8 in the uart module, which can store 8 uart-tx data.

• Support digital display, CPU can read and write to digital register, support 0-f output.

1.1 General Purpose Registers

reg	ABI name	description	Saver
x0	zero	The 0-value register, is ignored for writes and always set to 0 for reads	-
x1	ra	Function return address	Caller
x2	sp	Stack pointer	Callee
x3	gp	Global pointer	-
x4	tp	Thread pointer	-
x5	t0	Temporary register or alternate link register	Caller
x6-x7	t1-t2	Temporary register	Caller
x8	s0/fp	The register to save or the frame pointer register	Callee
x9	s1	Registers that need to be saved to hold critical data in the original process and avoid being destroyed during function calls	Callee
x10-x11	a0-a1	Function arguments/return values	Caller
x12-x17	a2-a7	Function arguments	Caller
x18-x27	s2-s11	Registers to save	Callee
x28-x31	t3-t6	Temporary registers	Caller

1.2 Contral and State Registers

reg	address	read and write
mstatus	0x300	RW
mie	0x304	RW
mtvec	0x305	RW
mscratch	0x340	RW
mepc	0x341	RW
mcause	0x342	RW
mtval	0x343	RW
mip	0x344	RW

1.3 Bus Address Space

element	address	description
spm	0x9000_0000 ~ 0x9000_3fff	Data memory
dtube	0x4000_0000 ~ 0x4000_0fff	FPGA digital tube display
plic	0x0c00_0000 ~ 0x0cff_ffff	Platform level interrupt controller
clint	0x0200_0000 ~ 0x0200_ffff	Core local interrupt controller
uart	0x1001_3000 ~ 0x1001_3fff	uart

Note: itcm does not hang on the bus, its address space size is 8192*32bits.

1.3.1 Clint Memory Mapped Address

element	address	description	Read and Write
clint_mtime_high	0x0200_bfff	The high 32 bits of the timer	RW
clint_mtime_low	0x0200_bff8	The low 32 bits of the timer	RW
clint_mtimecmp_high	0x0200_4004	Config register comparison values	RW
clint_mtimecmp_low	0x0200_4000	Config register comparison values	RW
clint_msip	0x0200_0000	software interrupt	RW

1.3.2 Uart Memory Mapped Address

element	address	description	Read and Write
uart_TransData	0x1001_3000	Transfer data register: The cpu writes data to this register, and then the data is output by the uart tx	WO
uart_ReceiveData	0x1001_3800	Receive data register: The data written by the pc side to the soc	RO

1.3.3 Dtube Memory Mapped Address

element	address	description	Read and Write
dtube_Hex0Num	0x4000_0000	FPGE digital tube hex0	RW
dtube_Hex1Num	0x4000_0004	FPGE digital tube hex1	RW
dtube_Hex2Num	0x4000_0008	FPGE digital tube hex2	RW
dtube_Hex3Num	0x4000_000c	FPGE digital tube hex3	RW
dtube_Hex4Num	0x4000_0010	FPGE digital tube hex4	RW
dtube_Hex5Num	0x4000_0014	FPGE digital tube hex5	RW

1.3.4 Plic Memory Mapped Address

element	address	description	Read and Write
Sour1_Prior	0x0c00_0000	source1 priority	RW
Sour2_Prior	0x0c00_0004	source2 priority	RW
Sour3_Prior	0x0c00_0008	source3 priority	RW

• Interrupt Allocation Table (External Irq)

PLIC Source Interrupt Num	Source
source1	uart
source2	FPGA irq button

1.4 Clock Configuration

clock_name	frequence	description
CLK_IN	50MHz	From FPGA
clk_50	50MHz	From CLK_IN, obtained from PLL without frequency division
clk_5	5MHz	From CLK_IN, obtained from PLL tenth frequency

1.5 Instructions

1. Integer arithmetic instruction

addi    rd, rs1, imm[11；0]
slti    rd, rs1, imm[11；0]     
sltiu   rd, rs1, imm[11；0]     
andi    rd, rs1, imm[11；0]     
ori     rd, rs1, imm[11；0]
xori    rd, rs1, imm[11；0]     
slli    rd, rs1, shamt[4:0]     
srli    rd, rs1, shamt[4:0]     
srai    rd, rs1, shamt[4:0]
lui     rd, imm
auipc   rd, imm
add     rd, rs1 , rs2
sub     rd, rs1 , rs2
slt     rd, rs1 , rs2
sltu    rd, rs1 , rs2
and     rd, rs1 , rs2
or      rd, rs1 , rs2
xor     rd, rs1 , rs2
sll     rd, rs1 , rs2
srl     rd, rs1 , rs2
sra     rd, rs1 , rs2

2. Branch and jump instruction

jal     rd, label
jalr    rd, rs1, imm
beq     rs1, rs2, label
bne     rs1, rs2, label
blt     rs1, rs2, label
bltu    rs1, rs2, label
bge     rs1, rs2, label
bgeu    rs1, rs2, label

3. Integer Load/Store instruction

lw      rd, offset[11:0](rs1)
lh      rd, offset[11:0](rs1)
lhu     rd, offset[11:0](rs1)
lb      rd, offset[11:0](rs1)
lbu     rd, offset[11:0](rs1)
sw      rs2, offset[11:0](rs1)
sh      rs2, offset[11:0](rs1)
sb      rs2, offset[11:0](rs1)

4. CSR insterction

csrrw   rd, csr, rs1
csrrs   rd, csr, rs1
csrrc   rd, csr, rs1
csrrwi  rd, csr, imm[4:0]
csrrsi  rd, csr, imm[4:0]
csrrci  rd, csr, imm[4:0]

5. special instruction

ecall
ebreak
mret

2. Pipeline Processing

Because of the existence of the pipeline, the internal general purpose register is accessed in the decoding stage, and the write back is performed in the fifth stage, which will inevitably lead to data hazard.

At the same time, the jump instruction can only be determined in the decoding stage. In the instruction fetch, the static branch prediction is used. If the prediction error is found in the decoding stage, there will be a control hazard, that is, an instruction that should not be executed after the jump instruction needs to be flushed.

Also, when accessing the bus, the slave device will ask to wait, the memory data cannot be read out, and the pipeline needs to be paused.

2.1 Interrupt Exception

• When an interrupt occurs, the mip in the csr register is pulled high, and the processor detects the interrupt and executes a jump. At this point, the instruction to mem has been executed, and the instruction to mem may be executed (memory access instruction) or not (write back register instruction). After the exception program completes, jump back to the first instruction that was flushed.

• When an exception occurs, it is usually an exception instruction found in the decoding phase, or an ecall or ebreak instruction is presented, and the next instruction is flushed. When the exception instruction is executed in the mem phase, it jumps to the exception handler and flushes the entire pipeline. The mepc in the csr register saves the exception instruction, and the instruction +4 will be operated by the software.

2.2 Branch Jump

If the prediction is correct, the pipeline will execute correctly. If the prediction is wrong, an extra instruction will be fetched to flush the pipeline and execute the correct br_pc.

2.3 AHB wait

This cpu supports bus accesses that may need to wait, so in the write back phase it is necessary to determine whether the memory data read in the load instruction has already been read out, and if so, pause the pipeline.

3. FPGA Config

• CLK_IN: 50MHz
• RST_EN: KEY0
• CPU_EN: SW0
• TX: GPIO_0
• RX: GPIO_1
• DTUBE_HEX0: HEX0
• DTUBE_HEX1: HEX1
• DTUBE_HEX2: HEX2
• DTUBE_HEX3: HEX3
• DTUBE_HEX4: HEX4
• DTUBE_HEX5: HEX5

4.

Why AHB-lite?

Consider whether the instruction memory and Data memory should be hung on the bus, because the data and instructions in the same cycle are likely to read the bus, then the CPU contains an Int-master and a data-master.

For the AHB protocol, only one master can access the bus at a time. It also requires arbitration between different masters, which takes a lot of time.

In AHB-martix, multiple masters are allowed to access the bus at the same time, but each slave has its own arbiter, which costs a lot of area.

Therefore, the instruction memory and data memory are directly connected to the cpu, and the other peripheral devices are connected to AHB-lite. This protocol only supports one master, does not need arbitration, and does not need transfer of bus ownership, which saves time.