This page contains information and links to the laboratory projects included on this CD. These labs have been contributed by faculty who use Computer Organization and Design as a textbook in their courses.
Contents:
The following labs are given to students at Harvey Mudd College as part of the Introduction to Computer Engineering course. The third lab involves using hardware provided to students; you will need similar hardware to undertake this lab.
Several of the labs involve using the Xilinx ISE 4 Project Navigator and ModelSim XE software. You download a free copy of the Xilinx ISE software from the company's web site; click here for more details. However, note that the latest version is 6.1i, which has some differences from the version described in the labs.
The following homeworks are also given to students in the Introduction to Computer Engineering course. Many of the questions in each homework relate to the labs above. Some of the homeworks refer to the content of lectures given to students of the course; notes from these lectures have been included. Homeworks 7 and 8 are simply exercises from the textbook, and so are omitted from this collection.
These labs, homeworks, and associated notes were written by David Harris, Qimin Yang, and Ruye Wang.
The following labs are given to students at Kansas University as part of a course covering microprocessor design. The labs are based on the material in Computer Organization and Design, and involve writing a VHDL behavioural model of a simple 16-bit, 9-instruction pipelined RISC-style microprocessor.
These labs were written by David Andrews and Perry Alexander.
While working on these labs, you may find it useful to refer to the VHDL tutorial included on this CD. You may also find it useful to examine the picoProcessor VHDL model included on this CD; the model is similar to the end result of these labs.
The following labs are based on the MIPS laboratory environment used at Lund University and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden. The environment consists of a hardware platform, and MipsIt software for simulating the hardware. Unless you go to the trouble of buying the hardware, you will need to use the software simulator for all the exercises.
These labs were written by Mats Brorsson and Jan Eric Larsson.
The MipsIt simulator software is included on this CD. You should install the software on your local hard drive and familiarize yourself with it before trying these labs. Click here for instructions on installing the MipsIt software.
Students of the Machine Organization course at Southwest Baptist University are shown the TinyMIPS processor model (included on this CD). While the model does not contain many of the features found in a typical modern CPU, students benefit from using it as the basis for more complex and realistic processor models.
These labs were written by Tom Pittman.
The TinyMIPS model executes using the GateSim software included on this CD.You should install the software on your local hard drive and familiarize yourself with it before trying these exercises. Click here for instructions on installing the GateSim software.