A Look at the WOMBAT Architecture

• WOMBAT is based on an architecture proposed by Dale Skrien.
• I have my own personal simulation environment for this architecture.
  • It is written in C++
  • Uses FLTK
  • Uses flex and bison compiler tools.
  • If these tools are installed in a linux environment, you should be able to build it.
  • I have no idea about windows.
  • I would love to have this moved to javascript available on line, if interested see me.
  • I would love to have a tk-gate implementation of this machine, if interested see me.
• There are three components currently.
  • An assembler (was)
  • A gui simulator (guiSim)
  • A text based simulator (sim)
• Documentation is available here as are example programs, source code, ...
• The machine has a very simple instruction set
  • All basic instructions operate on
    • The data at the address in memory
      • You may assume memory is a large array of integers.
      • Index from 0 to MEMORY_SIZE
      • Memory is byte addressable
        • The smallest amount of memory you can access is a byte
      • But for all practical purposes, all data and instructions must be word aligned.
        • A word, in this machine, is 16 bits.
        • The last bit in a legal address is a 0.
        • Bytes 0 and 1 constitute a word
        • Bytes 2 and 3 constitute a word
    • The single general purpose register, the accumulator (ACC).
  • ADD 100
    • Fetches the 16 bit word at memory location 100 (this is hex)
    • Adds this to the value currently stored in the accumulator
    • Stores the result in the accumulator.
  • The same is true for Subtract, Multiply, Divide
  • LOAD will load a value from memory and store it in the accumulator.
  • STORE will store the value of the accumulator into the location in memory.
  • ADDI does not use memory, instead the value listed in the instruction is added to the accumulator and stored in the accumulator.
  • LOADI and STOREI allow for indirect indexing.
    • Think pointer.
    • The pointer is stored in memory.
  • READ and WRITE are instructions that perform input and output
    • Data is either read from or written to the accumulator.
    • Output is presented to the user.
    • The inREG is a special purpose input register.
    • The outREG is a special purpose output register.
  • JMP, JMPN and JMPZ are used for flow control.
    • JMP changes the program counter (PC), a special purpose register, to the value stored in the instruction.
    • Both JMPN and JMPZ examine the program counter.
      • If it is negative (JMPN)
      • Or if it is zero (JMPZ)
      • The value of the PC is changed the value encoded in the instruction.
  • STOP is fairly self explanatory.
• Other hardware components.
  • Instructions are stored in a special purpose register called the instruction register (IR)
  • Memory is accessed through a special interface called the memory management unit (MMU)
    • The MMU contains two special purpose registers.
    • The Memory Address Register (MAR) stores the address of memory we wish to interact with.
    • The Memory Data Register (MDR) is a place to hold data transferred to or from memory.
  • Math is performed in the arithmetic logic unit (ALU)
  • The entire process is controlled by the control unit (CU)
  • All data is transferred between these using a common bus
• A simplified form of Register Transfer Notation (RTN) is used to describe the actions of the instructions.
  • Registers are referred to by their symbolic names (ACC, IR, PC, MAR, MDR)
  • M is an array modeling memory.
  • address represents the address encoded in the instruction.
  • An arrow (←) indicates the direction data moves.
  • ACC ← PC means transfer the contents of the program
  • M[address] ← PC means transfer the PC to the memory address location specified.