Attiny15L Architectural Overview - Atmel AVR ATtiny15L Manual

ATtiny15L
Architectural
Overview
1187H–AVR–09/07
The fast-access Register File concept contains 32 x 8-bit general purpose working reg-
isters with a single-clock-cycle access time. This means that during one single clock
cycle, one ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) operation is executed. Two operands are output
from the Register File, the operation is executed, and the result is stored back in the
Register File – in one clock cycle.
Two of the 32 registers can be used as a 16-bit pointer for indirect memory access. This
pointer is called the Z-pointer, and can address the Register File, IO file and the Flash
Program memory.
Figure 2. The ATtiny15L AVR RISC Architecture
512 x 16
Program
FLASH
Instruction
Register
Direct Addressing
Instruction
Decoder
Control Lines
The ALU supports arithmetic and logic functions between registers or between a con-
stant and a register. Single-register operations are also executed in the ALU. Figure 2
shows the ATtiny15L AVR RISC microcontroller architecture. The AVR uses a Harvard
architecture concept with separate memories and buses for program and data memo-
ries. The program memory is accessed with a two-stage pipeline. While one instruction
is being executed, the next instruction is pre-fetched from the program memory. This
concept enables instructions to be executed in every clock cycle. The Program memory
is In-System Programmable Flash memory.
With the relative jump and relative call instructions, the whole address space is directly
accessed. All AVR instructions have a single 16-bit word format, meaning that every
program memory address contains a single 16-bit instruction.
During interrupts and subroutine calls, the return address Program Counter (PC) is
stored on the Stack. The Stack is a 3-level-deep Hardware Stack dedicated for subrou-
tines and interrupts.
The I/O memory space contains 64 addresses for CPU peripheral functions as Control
Registers, Timer/Counters and other I/O functions. The memory spaces in the AVR
architecture are all linear and regular memory maps.
Data Bus 8-bit
Program Status
Counter and Test
32 x 8
General
Purpose
Registrers
64 x 8
EEPROM
ATtiny15L
Control
Registrers
Interrupt
Unit
SPI Unit
2 x 8-bit
Timer/Counter
Watchdog
Timer
ALU
ADC
Analog
Comparator
I/O Lines
5