Porting LLVM Compiler to a Custom Processor Architecture Using Synopsys Processor Designer

Application specific instruction-set processor (ASIP) is a suitable design choice for system designers who seek both flexibility to handle various applications in the domain together with the performance. Successful development of an ASIP, however, requires a software development kit (SDK) to be provided along with the processor. Synopsys Processor Designer is an ASIP development tool, which takes as input a set of files written in a high-level architecture description language called LISA (Language for Instruction Set Architecture), and generates SDK as well as RTL. Recently, they have added support for the generation of LLVM compiler backend, though some manual work is required. In this paper, we introduce some details in porting LLVM compiler to a custom processor architecture in Synopsys Processor Designer.