Title :
Use of a soft-core processor in a hardware/software codesign laboratory
Author :
Chamberlain, Roger ; Lockwood, John ; Gayen, Saurabh ; Hough, Richard ; Jones, Phillip
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci. & Eng., Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO, USA
Abstract :
This paper describes our experience to date and current plans for a senior-level microelectronics laboratory course on hardware/software codesign. The course utilizes an open-source, soft-core processor deployed on the FPX platform as an integral component of the students´ designs. Students write software to execute on a Leon SPARC-compatible processor and write VHDL to implement hardware-accelerated computational functions in FPGA hardware.
Keywords :
computer science education; educational courses; electronic engineering education; field programmable gate arrays; hardware description languages; hardware-software codesign; microprocessor chips; FPGA hardware; VHDL; hardware-accelerated computational functions; hardware/software codesign laboratory; microelectronics course; open-source processor; soft-core processor; Computer architecture; Computer science; Digital systems; Field programmable gate arrays; Hardware; Laboratories; Logic design; Microelectronics; Open source software; Software tools;
Conference_Titel :
Microelectronic Systems Education, 2005. (MSE '05). Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2374-9
DOI :
10.1109/MSE.2005.63
