Design, development and testing of a 16-bit reduced instruction set computer architecture based processor

The design of efficient processors with customized functionality is the need for low-power embedded systems. A 16-bit processor is suitable for such systems compared to a 32-bit processor due to low power consumption. In this paper, we proposed a design of a 16-bit processor based on reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture using a multicycle data path. The design, development, and verification were carried-out using Xilinx Vivado, Xilinx Power Estimator, and Modelsim tools. The design of the processor is implemented on Spartan 7 (XC7S6- 2CPGA196C) FPGA board using Verilog hardware description language (HDL). The verification of the designed processor is performed through the execution of a set of instructions. The proposed RISC processor design utilizes about half of the computing resources compared to traditional 16-bit processors and hence achieves significantly lesser power consumption.