Development and prototyping system far an 8-bit multitask micropower processor

A low power, event-driven microprocessor, called PUNCH, has been conceived, realized and commercialized in Switzerland. In this paper we present a development and prototyping system for PUNCH, composed of two main parts: an emulator and a monitor. The emulator is an implementation of the PUNCH architecture using Actel FPGA circuits, on a NuBus format card hosted by a Macintosh computer. The monitor is a program running on the Macintosh, allowing symbolic debugging (display and modification of the resources of the processor, as well as control of the execution of the applications).