Patchable instruction ROM architecture

Increased systems level integration has meant the movement of many traditionally off chip components onto a single chip including a processor, instruction storage, data path, and local memory. The design of these systems is driven by two conflicting goals, the need for reduced area and the need for rapid development times. The two current design options for instruction storage, ROM and Flash, are each highly optimized to one of these two goals but provide little compromise between them. ROM is used for highly area optimized instruction memory, although this comes at a price of lengthy integration time due to it's need to be correct before the chip is sent for fabrication. Flash is an alternative instruction memory that can significantly reduce the time to market by allowing embedded software to be upgraded after fabrication, meaning that software test and fabrication can be overlapped. Unfortunately Flash takes over a factor of 2 times the area of the equivalent ROM based storage...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: CASES
• Authors: Timothy Sherwood, Brad Calder
• Keywords: CASES 2001, Instruction Memory, Instruction Storage, Patchable Instruction ROM, System Software