VHDL design of embedded processor cores: the industry-standard microcontroller 8051 and 68HC11

Abstract

Driven by the recent advances in VLSI technology, long-standing controller architectures have experienced a revival. The fast emerging IP (Intellectual Property) market is demanding embedded soft cores of well-established microcontrollers such as the 8051 and 68HC11. "System on a chip" technologies enable hardware designers to integrate their board designs, existing of several separate chips, into a single ASIC. For this transition a pool of adequate high level building blocks favorably implemented as technology-independent VHDL or Verilog descriptions is required.