The Design of A Program Counter Unit for RISC Processors

RISC 프로세서의 프로그램 카운터 부(PCU)의 설계

This paper proposes a program counter unit(PCU) on the pipelined architecture of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) type high performance processors, PCU is used for supplying instruction addresses to memory units(Instruction Cache) efficiently. A RISC processor's PCU has to compute the instruction address within required intervals continnously. So, using the method of self-generated incrementor, is more efficient than the conventional one's using ALU or private adder. The proposed PCU is designed to have the fast +4(Byte Address) operation incrementor that has no carry propagation delay. Design specifications are taken by analyzing the whole data path operation of target processor's default and exceptional mode instructions. CMOS and wired logic circuit technologic are used in PCU for the fast operation which has small layout area and power dissipation. The schematic capture and logic, timing simulation of proposed PCU are performed on Apollo W/S using Mentor Graphics CAD tooks.