Awesome

NOTE: I am in the middle of refactoring the project structure to support multiple CPU versions with different purposes. Also, I am moving the build system to gradle. Documentation coming soon.

Micro CISC (uCISC)

uCISC is an opinionated micro instruction set, attempting to build a computer that is understandable by a single human from the CPU micro-architecture to the high level programming language.

Quick link to the docs: Overview

This is the main repo for uCISC development. This project will hold all the uCISC code developed for the instruction set, compiler, core libraries and OS. In addition to this project you will need an emulator or FPGA hardware to run the code.

Virtual Execution:

• ucisc-kotlin - An emulator and debugger
• OUTDATED - ucisc-ruby - A prototype compiler and VM written in ruby.

Getting Started

Install the Emulater

See the ucisc-kotlin readme for instructions on how to install the emulator. It is recommended to install it such that you have ucisc as a command on the terminal.

Compiling and Running uCISC

To compile uCISC code:

ucisc -c examples/fib.ucisc

To run uCISC code on the emulator

ucisc examples/knight.ucisc

If you need the UART port hooked up, you'll need to do a little more work. First, you'll need to create a virtual 2-way serial port. On linux you can do that with socat

> sudo apt install socat
> socat -d -d pty,raw,echo=0 pty,raw,echo=0

This will print out something like:

2020/11/30 19:06:28 socat[9758] N PTY is /dev/pts/4
2020/11/30 19:06:28 socat[9758] N PTY is /dev/pts/5
2020/11/30 19:06:28 socat[9758] N starting data transfer loop with FDs [5,5] and [7,7]

The two PTY devices are the two ends of your serial port. Hook one end to your serial application (I recommend GTKTerm) and the other to the uCISC emulator:

ucisc -r=/dev/pts/4 -t=/dev/pts/4 examples/space.ucisc

Running the Hardware

You can find details about the reference implementation on the hardware in its own README.

Helpful Extras

You will find helpful extras like syntax highlighting in the extras folder. At the moment we have a vim syntax setup. Feel free to send config files for other editors my way.

Examples

The examples folder contains standalone examples of ucisc code that you can run using the VM.

Documentation

You'll find helpful documentation in the docs directory. The documentation is constantly improving. Start at the Introduction for more information.