2026-07-24T17:25:24Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:159 2024-03-06T11:06:05Z ddc:004 open_access

The Kiel Esterel Processor - A Semi-Custom, Configurable Reactive Processor Li, Xin von Hanxleden, Reinhard Esterel synchronous languages reactive programming ASIPs The synchronous language Esterel is an established language for developing reactive systems. It gives an abstract, well-defined and executable description of the application, and can be synthesized into hardware and software. Typically, an Esterel program is first translated into other, lower-level languages (such as VHDL or C), and then compiled further. However, there is also the alternative of executing Esterel-like instructions directly. For example, in the REFLIX and RePIC projects, Roop et al.\ have augmented traditional processors with custom hardware to execute Esterel instructions. This patch strategy is a convenient approach, but has some shortages. We present the Kiel Esterel Processor (KEP), a semi-custom, configurable reactive processor for the direct execution of Esterel programs. It consists of a reactive core and scalable peripheral elements. KEP supports standard Esterel statements directly, except (so far) for the concurrency operator. Valued signals and counter functions in Esterel statements are supported by KEP. Due to its control path and its cooperation with elements, KEP obeys exact Esterel (preemption and priority) rules, including for example abort/weak abort (nests). Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Xin Li and Reinhard von Hanxleden 2005 Is Part Of Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings, Volume 4491, Synchronous Programming - SYNCHRON'04 (2005) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/DagSemProc.04491.6 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-1597 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DagSemProc.04491.6 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode