A hypermedia approach to document microelectronic devices

The need for real solutions to technical training on microelectronic devices increases in parallel with the complexity of the devices. In fact, more and more complex devices render traditional textual manuals less effective in their explanation of the internal architecture and dynamic mechanisms. Hypermedia documentation offers a valid solution to the problem, by including graphics and animation as communication media. Graphics in the hypermedia documentation can be used to create a graphic model of the microelectronic device, thus reducing the mental complexity of the modelling task for the user. Animation provides users with visual aids to their understanding of the dynamic processes inside the microelectronic device. This paper illustrates, for the purposes of training and education in microelectronics, a Hypermedia form of documentation for a specific microprocessor, the INMOS T9000 transputer