FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTION
The BOMB! is a miniature CPU that has a limited instruction set,
yet still performs all the essential CPU operations. The main
operations can be separated into arithmetic, data transfer, control,
and miscellaneous categories. The arithmetic operations are very
basic, but enough to be used in a simple application. The data
transfer instructions provide all the necessary load and store
commands between memory and the registers in the CPU. There is
only one control instruction: branch. The lack of other instructions
such as branch on comparisons is due to space and complexity issues.
We believe basic functionality can be achieved with just one
branch instruction. Finally, the miscellaneous instructions include
one common instruction, NOP, which speaks for itself, and another
instruction, IDLE, which is can be used for applications common
to microcontrollers.
The challenges faced in creating the CPU come on several levels.
On the highest level, we were challenged with deciding upon the
best combination of instructions our CPU would execute. There
are obviously a slew of possible instructions that we could have
chosen, but our goal was to choose a set which would keep our
CPU simple, while also maintaining the basic traits of a full
fledged CPU. We also wanted to provide an instruction which would
make the chip more application oriented, and hence we included
the IDLE instruction.
On a lower level, the challenge was efficiently communicating
between one piece of the CPU with another. To ensure an efficient
and successful design, we had to make sure the timing of the signals
from the PLA matched those of the ALU, PC, and registers. Also,
we had to decide upon a bus design which both saved space, while
still providing flexibility in terms of which components could
read or write from the bus.
On the lowest level, the substrate connections proved to be a
very time consuming problem. Since the substrate errors did not
appear until the entire chip was connected, fixing the problems
often required very time consuming rewiring and re-layout of the
components.
INSTRUCTION SET SPECIFICATION
All instructions are 4 bits in length. The operands are all implicit.
For the ARITHMETIC/LOGICAL instructions, the implicit operands
are either the register and the accumulator, or just the accumulator.
For the DATA TRANSFER and CONTROL instructions, the implicit memory
operand is the 8-bit value specified by the two memory locations
immediately following the instruction. The first four bits immediately
following the instruction specify bits 7-4 of the memory address,
and the next four bits specify bits 3-0 of the memory address.
So, the DATA TRANSFER and CONTROL instructions can be thought
of as 12-bit instructions, where the first 4-bits specify the
instruction, and the following 8-bits specify the memory location.
The MISC/HARDWARE instructions have no operands.
OPCODE | INSTRUCTION | DESCRIPTION | ||||
ARITHMETIC/LOGICAL | ||||||
0000 | ADDs the value in the register to the value on the accumulator and places the result in the accumulator | |||||
0001 | SUBTRACTs the value in the register to the value on the accumulator and places the result in the accumulator | |||||
0010 | Performs a logical AND on the value in the register to the value on the accumulator and places the result in the accumulator | |||||
0011 | Performs a logical OR on the value in the register to the value on the accumulator and places the result in the accumulator | |||||
0100 | SHIFTS the binary value in the register to the left by one and places a zero in the LSB | |||||
0101 | SHIFTS the binary value in the register to the right by one and places a zero in the MSB | |||||
DATA TRANSFERS | ||||||
0110 | LOADs the value from the memory address specified in the two instructions immediately following into the register. | |||||
0111 | LOADs the value from the memory address specified in the two instructions immediately following into the accumulator | |||||
1000 | SAVEs the value in the accumulator to the memory address specified in the two instructions immediately following. | |||||
CONTROL | ||||||
1001 | BRANCHes (jumps) to the instruction in the memory address specified in the two instructions immediately following. | |||||
MISC/HARDWARE | ||||||
1010 | NO OPERATION. | |||||
1011 | IDLE's the hardware until the INTERRUPT pin is driven high. |
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