ISDL: An Instruction Set Description Language for Retargetability

Abstract—We present the Instruction Set Description Language, ISDL, a machine description language used to describe target architectures to a retargetable compiler. The features and flexibility of ISDL enable the description of vastly different architectures, in particular VLIW architectures. ISDL explicitly supports constraints that define valid operation groupings within an instruction, increasing the range of specifiable architectures. We have written a tool that, given an ISDL description of a processor, automatically generates an assembler for it. Ongoing work includes the development of an automatic code-generator generator.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: DAC
• Authors: George Hadjiyiannis, Silvina Hanono, Srinivas Devadas
• Keywords: Computer Architecture, DAC 1997, Description Language, Particular Vliw Architectures, Target Architectures