DESIGNING A CONFIGURABLE PIPELINED PROCESSOR

System and computer-implemented methods herein design a configurable pipelined processor. Such systems and methods provide a configuration specification, by providing a base processor or digital design description, a base instruction set with a plurality of base instructions, and a plurality of configurable features. At least one of the configurable features is an additional instruction different from the base instructions. Further, such systems and methods generate a hardware implementation based on the configuration specification to produce a plurality of configured pipeline stages. The configured pipeline stages are different from base pipeline stages in a base processor or digital design hardware implementation (corresponding to the base processor or digital design description as a result of the additional instruction being included in the configuration specification). Such systems and methods also generate, based on the configuration specification, a plurality of software development tools including an application program compiler.