8. Lattice Mico32 Specific Information — RTEMS CPU Architecture Supplement 5.4-rc2 (21st August 2026) documentation

# 8. Lattice Mico32 Specific Information

This chaper discusses the Lattice Mico32 architecture dependencies in this port of RTEMS. The Lattice Mico32 is a 32-bit Harvard, RISC architecture “soft” microprocessor, available for free with an open IP core licensing agreement. Although mainly targeted for Lattice FPGA devices the microprocessor can be implemented on other vendors’ FPGAs, too.

Architecture Documents

For information on the Lattice Mico32 architecture, refer to the following documents available from Lattice Semiconductor http://www.latticesemi.com/.

- “LatticeMico32 Processor Reference Manual” http://www.latticesemi.com/dynamic/view_document.cfm?document_id=20890

## 8.1. CPU Model Dependent Features

The Lattice Mico32 architecture allows for different configurations of the processor. This port is based on the assumption that the following options are implemented:

- hardware multiplier

- hardware divider

- hardware barrel shifter

- sign extension instructions

- instruction cache

- data cache

- debug

## 8.2. Register Architecture

This section gives a brief introduction to the register architecture of the Lattice Mico32 processor.

The Lattice Mico32 is a RISC archictecture processor with a 32-register file of 32-bit registers.

Register Name

Function

r0

holds value zero

r1-r25

general purpose

r26/gp

general pupose / global pointer

r27/fp

general pupose / frame pointer

r28/sp

stack pointer

r29/ra

return address

r30/ea

exception address

r31/ba

breakpoint address

Note that on processor startup all register values are undefined including r0, thus r0 has to be initialized to zero.

## 8.3. Calling Conventions

### 8.3.1. Calling Mechanism

A call instruction places the return address to register r29 and a return from subroutine (ret) is actually a branch to r29/ra.

### 8.3.2. Register Usage

A subroutine may freely use registers r1 to r10 which are not preserved across subroutine invocations.

### 8.3.3. Parameter Passing

When calling a C function the first eight arguments are stored in registers r1 to r8. Registers r1 and r2 hold the return value.

## 8.4. Memory Model

The Lattice Mico32 processor supports a flat memory model with a 4 Gbyte address space with 32-bit addresses.

The following data types are supported:

Type | Bits | C Compiler Type
--- | --- | ---
unsigned byte | 8 | unsigned char
signed byte | 8 | char
unsigned half-word | 16 | unsigned short
signed half-word | 16 | short
unsigned word | 32 | unsigned int / unsigned long
signed word | 32 | int / long

Data accesses need to be aligned, with unaligned accesses result are undefined.

## 8.5. Interrupt Processing

The Lattice Mico32 has 32 interrupt lines which are however served by only one exception vector. When an interrupt occurs following happens:

- address of next instruction placed in r30/ea

- IE field of IE CSR saved to EIE field and IE field cleared preventing further exceptions from occuring.

- branch to interrupt exception address EBA CSR + 0xC0

The interrupt exception handler determines from the state of the interrupt pending registers (IP CSR) and interrupt enable register (IE CSR) which interrupt to serve and jumps to the interrupt routine pointed to by the corresponding interrupt vector.

For now there is no dedicated interrupt stack so every task in the system MUST have enough stack space to accommodate the worst case stack usage of that particular task and the interrupt service routines COMBINED.

Nested interrupts are not supported.

## 8.6. Default Fatal Error Processing

Upon detection of a fatal error by either the application or RTEMS during initialization the `rtems_fatal_error_occurred` directive supplied by the Fatal Error Manager is invoked. The Fatal Error Manager will invoke the user-supplied fatal error handlers. If no user-supplied handlers are configured or all of them return without taking action to shutdown the processor or reset, a default fatal error handler is invoked.

Most of the action performed as part of processing the fatal error are described in detail in the Fatal Error Manager chapter in the User’s Guide. However, the if no user provided extension or BSP specific fatal error handler takes action, the final default action is to invoke a CPU architecture specific function. Typically this function disables interrupts and halts the processor.

In each of the architecture specific chapters, this describes the precise operations of the default CPU specific fatal error handler.

## 8.7. Symmetric Multiprocessing

SMP is not supported.

## 8.8. Thread-Local Storage

Thread-local storage is not implemented.

## 8.9. Board Support Packages

There are no Lattice Micro32 specific notes on BSPs.

### 8.9.1. System Reset

An RTEMS based application is initiated or re-initiated when the processor is reset.