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CodAL, standing for Codasip Architectural Language, is central to developing a processor core using Codasip Studio. The language has a C-like syntax and it merges good practices and code constructs from conventional programming languages and hardware description languages. It has been developed from the outset to describe all aspects of a processor including both the instruction set architecture (ISA) and microarchitecture.

Each processor description includes four elements in its description:

1. Architectural resources, for example, registers and a program counter.
2. Instruction set, that is, names of instructions, their operands and their binary form (opcodes).
3. Semantics, or a description of the behaviour of each instruction and exception – how they affect the architectural resources.
4. Implementation, which includes those resources and behaviour (especially timing) that are not visible in the architectural model but which define a particular micro-architectural implementation. Note that more than one micro-architectural implementation can be in a single CodAL description.

The architectural or instruction accurate (IA) model contains the instruction set, architectural resources, and the semantics. The micro-architectural or cycle accurate (CA) model contains the instruction set, architectural resources and the micro-architectural implementation.

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