CONFIGURABLE 8-BIT MICROCONTROLLER IP CORE AS A BASIS FOR EFFECTIVE SYSTEM ON CHIP IMPLEMENTATION

This paper explains why the 8-bit microcontroller IP cores are still popular in system on chip designs. It presents R8051XC configurable microcontroller core (developed at Evatronix SA) with a focus on the implemented enhancements of this popular instruction set architecture and on the configurability of the core. For microcontrollers embedded in ASIC or ASSP circuits effective support for software development is very important. Therefore on chip debug support (OCDS) solutions developed for R8051XC are presented along with prototyping environment and real time operating system port available for R8051XC follows. Finally application specific solutions based on R8051XC and oriented towards USB-interfaced and Ethernet-interfaced systems have been presented.