Microprogramming: A tool for vertical migration

Abstract The term vertical migration refers to a performance improvement technique in which the selected functions or program primitives are moved to an optimal lower level within the multiple levels (layers) of a software/firmware hierarchy on a single processor. Two types of architecture synthesis using microprogramming (vertical migration) are defined: functional architecture synthesis and problem-oriented architecture synthesis. In the first one we include two areas: operating systems and high-level-language-defined-processors. In the second two types of synthesis can be identified: heuristic approach and analytical approach. A rigorous methadology is described, within the analytical approach to tune the architecture of a dynamically microprogrammable computer to a given application in order to minimize its execution time. This method consists of the following steps: (1) a static analysis, (2) an analysis of the program's dynamic behaviour, (3) an evaluation of the time saving, and (4) a selection of those microprogrammable sequences with produce the greatest time saving in the program execution.

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