Computer Architecture Education And Research Involving Reconfigurable Hardware Platform

Computer Architecture and Organization deals with both software and hardware aspects of computer systems. This is important both for a programmer and a system designer. Due to their wide spread penetration in all fields, it is almost obligatory for students in Electrical, Computer, and Telecommunication engineering programs to master the basics of these two areas. Although a typical microprocessor programming course covers the architecture part of it, organization of systems is not widely addressed. Memory interfacing and expansion techniques, cache memory organization, memory management unit for virtual memory organization, alternative ways of processor design, fast arithmetic circuits are some topics covered under organization. The purpose, concept, and design of these system elements can be covered in a lecture class whereas their hardware implementation can be supported in a laboratory environment. The laboratory exercises would certainly enhance experiential learning of the students. However, choosing a suitable platform to accommodate the laboratory exercises is challenging as it needs to satisfy peculiar needs of different types of designs. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) provide a flexible hardware platform to accommodate digital systems. FPGAs, such as the ones provided by Xilinx, are quite useful in applications requiring hardware changes to accommodate system behavior. As such, these devices offer the opportunity to implement different computer system components conveniently in hardware using VHDL (Very high speed integrated circuit Hardware Description Language). FPGAs can be easily reconfigured to evaluate alternative design approaches often encountered in computer systems. With such implementation data, more complex models can be formulated and simulated to predict and evaluate system performance. Thus, such a reconfigurable platform also enables architecture and organization research. This paper presents an outline of a course covering concepts and implementation of computer system elements, associated laboratory exercises involving reconfigurable logic, and course related research with simulation results. Introduction Motivation and rationale: In order to enhance students’ learning in engineering programs, it is important to provide them with engaging laboratory and continuous assessment of learning outcomes 1, 2 . Also, providing examples and teaching subject matter through student-centered approaches ensure effective student learning 3 . These approaches promote activities valued by industry that encourage active student participation in the learning process 4, 5 . Moreover, it is also important for the students to be exposed to the open-ended nature of design problems 6 . These facts emphasize strong cohesion between the materials covered in a lecture class and its associated laboratory activities 7 . In addition to this, students need to appreciate the practice of design trade-offs among several competing requirements 8 . Limitation of traditional courses: Normally a course covering computer architecture and organization uses built hardware as the platform that has little configurability for laboratory exercises 9, 10 . Hardware is programmed in either a high level language or processor specific P ge 15303.2 assembly language. This bounds the students to only explore some architectural features by programming. Contrary to that, if the students could modify the hardware to implement a new feature, the exploration would be more comprehensive by programming several alternative approaches. Way to overcome: Thus, a reconfigurable hardware (such as FPGA) extends the horizon of experiments with architectural and organizational features of embedded computers. Usually, FPGAs are populated in a board containing several interfacing components such as displays, switches, push-buttons, and standard ports. As such, these boards have comparable features found in traditional processor based hardware used for such laboratory exercises 9 . FPGAs can be configured to implement different designs in hardware using either schematics or any hardware description language. The implemented hardware in FPGA can be programmed by code chosen by the designer. Thus, this design process becomes very intuitive for the students as if they own it. This process also empowers them with the concept of hardware / software codesign and integration, an area that is in high demand in the industry. Thus a reconfigurable hardware platform becomes a preferred means for meeting the educational goals discussed above. Benefit of incorporating research elements: Although undergraduate students may not be matured enough for research, a flavor of such could be introduced to them 11 . Performance and power consumption of a design, trade-offs among various metrics, and the issues of reliability and upgradability could be analyzed for a design implementation. These activities are expected to stimulate critical thinking in the students that would be beneficial in the capstone design project in their senior year as well as in the profession. With the above points in view, this paper outlines both the lecture and laboratory contents of such a course, its evaluation strategy, course related research involving students, justification and incorporation of the course in the curriculum. The paper ends with a conclusion suggesting future directions of the course.