Module Descriptor School of Computer Science and Statistics

When students have successfully completed this module they will be able to

• Analyse design requirements to produce a combined hardware and software design for simple systems, selecting peripherals and software architectures most suited to implementing each project.
• Develop implementation strategies for commissioning simple hardware and software systems.
• Visualise complex exception and interrupt-handling sequences to recognise potential problem sources and to develop appropriate debugging strategies.
• Analyse the characteristics of various processor architectures and the standard memory hierarchy.
• Work in small teams to design and implement the hardware and software aspects of their projects by dividing the tasks and responsibilities among the group members.

Students bring the knowledge and expertise of programming, digital logic and a small amount of digital electronics to the development of small system integration projects combining program design and implementation with simple interface interfacing and breadboarding. Each team is provided with a small ARM-based computer, a PC-based integrated development system, some electronic components and breadboarding facilities.  Students have to design, build and test integrated hardware and software systems to provide a certain required functionality. Students also study processor and memory architectural techniques such as pipelining, superscalar architectures and caches.

• Microprocessor system overview
• Microprocessor architecture overview
• Memory hierarchy
• Interfacing with peripheral devices
• Device programming
• Interrupt and Exception Handling

William Hohl, "ARM Assembly Language, Fundamentals and Techniques", CRC Press, 2009.

% Exam: 80
% Coursework: 20

Supplemental: Examination 100%