An Approach to Programmable Signal Processor Assemblers and Simulators

A method of programming an assembler and simulator for a programmable digital signal processor (PDSP) is proposed. This method is general and simple to execute, and makes use of theUNIX^®; utilities awk, sed, and grep to translate a source program, consisting of assembly instructions and C statements, to either machine code for the assembler or a C program for the simulator. The approach also provides the advantages that little programming effort is required to generate a new assembler and simulator for another processor instruction set. It also allows a PDSP to be simulated in the context of a larger system containing other PDSP´s, other hardware, and an external environment. A disadvantage is that the approach is applicable only to the UNIX operating system.