An ADL for Functional Specification of IA32

Many architecture description languages (ADL) have been recently proposed to automate the design of new microprocessors and their related development tools. However, none of those comes close to fully describing the IA32 architecture. In this paper, we present an ADL that is custom designed for the IA32 architecture. The ADL supports the unique features of IA32 that are generally ignored by other ADLs. It features a high-level type system, simple syntax, and a well-understood computation model. The ADL is analyzable in that it preserves high-level architectural features in its descriptions. It is also executable since it has bit-accurate semantics free of ambiguity. The ADL is expected to be used as a unified IA32 description for an instruction set simulator, a functional test generator, and possibly other tools.

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