RISC-V Design · All levels

Five-Stage Pipeline Partitioning and Timing Contracts: Software and Programmer View

Software and Programmer View for Five-Stage Pipeline Partitioning and Timing Contracts.

Software and programmer view

Software and Programmer View for Five-Stage Pipeline Partitioning and Timing Contracts is anchored on Post-layout Fmax versus stage slack spread, plus bubble rate introduced by stage-boundary timing fixes.. Convert observations into mechanism-backed decisions with explicit ownership.

  • Keep ISA profile, ABI, and extension assumptions explicit.

  • Validate runtime feature detection against hardware contract.

  • Correlate compiler output with microarchitectural counters.

  • Preserve deterministic trap and privilege behavior in all modes.

Decode contract

diagram
DECODE CONTROL MAP - Five-Stage Pipeline Partitioning and Timing Contracts

opcode/funct3/funct7      controls asserted
-----------------------   ---------------------------------------
LUI / AUIPC               rd_write, imm_select(U), alu_add_pc
JAL / JALR                rd_write, pc_redirect, link_write
BRANCH                    cmp_enable, branch_type, pc_redirect
LOAD                      mem_read, rd_write, wb_sel(memory)
STORE                     mem_write, store_size, addr_calc
OP-IMM                    alu_enable, imm_select(I), rd_write
OP                        alu_enable, src2_reg, rd_write
SYSTEM / CSR              csr_readwrite, trap_check, privilege_gate
VECTOR (V extension)      vdecode, lane_mask, vtype_update