An educational environment for program behavior analysis and cache memory design

Author

Giorgi, Roberto ; Prete, Cosimo Antonio ; Prina, Gianpaolo

Author_Institution

Dipartimento di Ingegneria della Inf., Pisa Univ., Italy

Volume

3

fYear

1997

Firstpage

1243

Abstract

The authors present an educational software package (Csim) used as a teaching tool to analyze the structure and behavior of a cache memory and to help the student in the design of cache memories for embedded systems. By means of an integrated software development environment, the user can create a program and explore its behavior (locality analysis). The student can observe the cache actions needed for a memory operation and evaluate the cache performance as a function of the configuration parameters. Finally, the parametric-evaluation graphical tools help in the actual design of an embedded system, in order to find the cache and memory configuration which provides the best balance between cost and performance

Keywords

cache storage; computer science education; courseware; integrated software; real-time systems; software engineering; teaching; Csim courseware; cache memory design; cache performance; computer science education programmes; educational environment; educational software package; embedded systems; integrated software development environment; locality analysis; parametric-evaluation graphical tools; program behavior analysis; student; Cache memory; Costs; Design engineering; Education; Embedded system; Instruments; Packaging; Programming; Software packages; Very large scale integration;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Frontiers in Education Conference, 1997. 27th Annual Conference. Teaching and Learning in an Era of Change. Proceedings.

Conference_Location

Pittsburgh, PA

ISSN

0190-5848

Print_ISBN

0-7803-4086-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FIE.1997.632644

Filename

632644