A Microprogramming Language for the MLP-900

The paper describes a language for programming a microprocessor which combines the features of assembly languages with those of higher level languages. The goal of the language design was to provide a convenient microprogramming language for the MLP-900 microprocessor project at USC/ Information Sciences Institute. The goal was accomplished by designing a language with careful consideration of the hardware instruction set. The language was also constrained not to implicitly affect the machine at runtime. The considerations provided freedom and low-level control for the programmer. The flexibility needed by the compiler to allow for higher-level language forms was also provided by allowing the language to produce several microinstructions for each language statement.