C for a tiny system

Abstract

We have implemented support for Padauk microcontrollers, tiny 8-Bit devices with 60 B to 256 B of RAM, in the Small Device C Compiler (SDCC), showing that the use of (mostly) standard C to program such minimal devices is feasible. We report on our experience and on the difficulties in supporting the hardware multithreading present on some of these devices. To make the devices a better target for C, we propose various enhancements of the architecture, and empirically evaluated their impact on code size.