Docente/Teacher

prof. Antonio ABRAMO

Crediti/Credits

6 CFU

Lingua/Language

Inglese/English

Obiettivi formativi specifici/Objectives

Electronic System Design: The Course provides the student with the theoretical and methodological skills required to understand and design modern microprocessor systems.

Competenze acquisite/Acquired skills

- Knowledge on measuring the performance of a computer system.
- Knowledge on main microprocessor architectures.
- Detailed knowledge on modern RISC architectures and elements.
- Ability to specify and execute the design of simple microprocessor in VHDL.

Programma/Lectures and exercises (topics and specific content)

General principles: technology trends on microprocessors and computer systems; methodologies on performance analysys; methodologies for the selection of different design options; the general architecture of a microprocessor (10 hours).
RISC architectures: the Instruction Set and its design methodologies; the Datapath; pipeline and Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP) exploitation; memory hierarchy; storage and I/O; elements of design for testability (30 hours).
The design of a microprocessor system:  design of a datapath/control unit system; design at the Lab. (20 hours).
Exercises (20 hours).

Bibliografia/References

- John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson “Computer Architecture: a quantitative approach” – 3rd Edition, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers (2003).
- P..J. Ashenden, ”The Designer’s Guide to VHDL”, Morgan Kaufmann (2000).

Modalità d'esame/Type of exam

written exam

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