A Guided Tour Through the ARChitect Processor Configurator Tool

The ARChitect tool is used by SoC designers to rapidly create customized ARC processor core designs which are optimized for specific applications.

Configurability

With ARChitect, designers can include the core features they need for their application, and remove the features they don't need. Performance and size tradeoffs are quickly accomplished, and the resulting design is always smaller and lower power than a fixed core.

Extendibility

ARChitect's four step extension wizard makes it easy for designers to accelerate critical code by adding instructions, registers and logic. The result is much higher application performance and/or lower device frequency than is possible with fixed cores.

Design automation

The ARChitect tool produces verified RTL and synthesis scripts. It also generates files and scripts which tailor downstream development tools for the user's customized core, including testbench, simulators, compiler/debugger, prototyping platform and documentation.

This tour will cover the following topics:

The Architect GUI

Creating a Custom Configuration

Creating Custom Extensions

Building the Customized Design

How to Navigate the tour

Use the top navigation to jump directly to the overview specific topics. Once inside a topic you can use the "next" and "previous" buttons located at the top and bottom right to move forward or backward. By using the top nav you may be skipping portions of the tour. To ensure you view the entire tour, please use the next buttons.