Towards Implementing RTL Microprocessor Agile Design Using Feature Oriented Programming

Recently, hardware agile design methods have been developed to improve the design productivity. However, the mod-eling methods hinder further design productivity improvements. In this paper, we propose and implement a microprocessor agile design method using feature oriented programming technology to improve design productivity. In this method, designs could be uniquely partitioned and constructed incrementally to explore various functional design features flexibly and efficiently. The key techniques to improve design productivity are flexible modeling extension and on-the-fly feature composing mechanisms. The evaluations on RISC- V and OR1200 CPU pipelines show the effectiveness of the proposed method on duplicate codes reduction and flexible feature composing while avoiding design resource overheads.