ABSTRACT

This chapter describes processor modeling using Architecture Description Languages (ADLs) and presents ADL-driven methodologies for software toolkit generation, hardware synthesis, exploration, and validation of programmable architectures. It illustrates the ADL-based physical modeling framework, which estimates power consumption, thermal footprint, and logic timing variation. The rich modeling capability of ADL is used to design various kinds of processor architectures ranging from programmable coarse-grained reconfigurable architectures to superscalar processors. ADLs can be classified into four categories based on the nature of the information: structural, behavioral, mixed, and partial. ADLs are used to specify processor and memory architectures and generate software toolkit including compiler, simulator, assembler, profiler, and debugger. The chapter discusses the approach of high-level power modeling and estimation for a Language for Instruction Set Architecture-based processor design framework. It also illustrates the thermal modeling and integration using HotSpot package. The chapter focuses on the automation flow and analyses its runtime overhead.