Microprocessor System Design Research Articles

Incorporating DRAGON12-light trainer board in an introductory microprocessors course

The HCS12 microcontroller and DRAGON12-Light Trainer boards are extensively utilized in microprocessor system design education. This paper details the rationale, approach, and outcomes from implementing the DRAGON12-Light Trainer board in teaching an upper-level undergraduate microprocessors course at Oakland University. The course’s primary goal is for students to acquire the skills necessary to design both hardware and software for microprocessor-based systems, with applications across various industries. The paper assesses the effectiveness of employing the Motorola HCS12 microcontroller for its real-world relevance and integrates the Freescale CodeWarrior IDE v5.1 environment for software development. This research uniquely contributes by measuring the improvement in students’ practical skills, specifically in hardware and software design using assembly and C programming, through hands-on lab assignments. It reports on the development of students’ abilities to engage in microprocessor-based system design and critically evaluates the applied aspects of pedagogy by incorporating the DRAGON12-Light Trainer in lab exercises, such as those involving ’Measuring Human Reaction Time’ and ’Servo motor interfacing.’ Quantitative results, derived from student surveys and assessments, indicate significant improvements in students’ programming competencies. The paper provides statistical results showcasing the increase in students’ self-rated confidence levels in assembly and C language programming before and after course completion. Additionally, qualitative insights are discussed, reflecting students’ experiences and the perceived applicability of the skills they acquired. These results underscore the pedagogical value of integrating practical training devices like the DRAGON12-Light Trainer board into microprocessors curricula.

USING TINKERCAD TO SUPPORT ONLINE THE LABORATORY WORK ON THE DESIGN OF MICROPROCESSOR SYSTEMS AT TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

This article reviews the possibility of using the Tinkercad Internet service for online study of the subjects connected with microprocessor systems. During the global coronavirus pandemic, online classes based on the Internet technologies have become virtually the only effective method of learning. However, while lectures can be taught successfully with the help of video conferences such as Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet etc., it is almost impossible to perform laboratory and practical work in the field of designing microprocessor systems with the help of these tools. Therefore, the authors suggest a new approach to practicums on the subjects related to microprocessor systems using tools of the Tinkercad Internet service. The existing methods and means of remote work with breadboard Arduino have been analyzed. The advantages of the Tinkercad Internet service in comparison with other tools of remote work have been disclosed. The service capability for microprocessor systems design has been considered. The article provides examples of elaborated lab works by means of the Tinkercad Internet service. Available capabilities and instruments in the system have been detailed. The process of learning based on the Tinkercad Internet service has been developed. Consequently, the use of the Tinkercad Internet service during e-learning gives the possibility to do lab works and microprocessor system design practicums without actual equipment, and the methods suggested by the authors assure the quality of students’ awareness in this direction. The prospective direction of this Internet service application can be the design of 3D printing models and their use during e-learning of other subjects, in particular Physics (Electrics section), Theoretical Basics of Electrical Engineering (DC section), as well as other sciences related to electronic circuit design.

Research Of Modeling Environments For Microprocessor Systems With Additional Modules Of Cryptographic Information Protection

The field of application of the protected microprocessor systems includes information security functions: authentication of subjects and objects of information interaction, information encryption, integrity control, access control,key management. Today, the urgent task is to establish the security of microprocessor-based systems using a variety ofcomputer simulation software environments. The work analyzes the most effective and affordable computer simulation programs for microprocessor systems and gives practical recommendations for their use. It has been shown thatthe most powerful computer-aided design system is the Proteus software suite which allows simulating the operationof various microprocessor devices with support for several microcontroller families from different manufacturers. Themain advantages include: performing all stages of development in a single environment; the ability to write, debug, andtest firmware, generate diagnostic messages to find programming errors. Using Multisim in the educational processmakes it possible to: review and change the status of the register content, program memory and data, stack cells andbit configuration; visualize the result of the execution of a single command or a program as a whole; demonstrate thepractice of joint use of languages C and Assembler in one project in order to optimize the program; to study the basics ofoperation and features of peripheral devices functioning. However, the limited set of microcontrollers in the Multisimprogram imposes significant restrictions on the possibility of using it for development of real projects. The computersimulation program TINA has a russified interface that is much easier compared to the Proteus with an ability to enter allthe information about the created project into one file. Compared to Multisim, the TINA library contains significantlymore microcontroller models, and the built-in programmer allows modifying programs and observing the results. Beingable to use the free version of TINA-TI and having an online version of TINACloud using cloud technologies makes thisprogram very useful for education. Web service offers many educational resources and the ability to perform research onthe design of microprocessor systems.

A technique of building a value function at the stage of conceptual design of microprocessor systems

The aim of this study is to formalize the selection of optimal technical solutions early in the design of microprocessor-based systems, which allows developers to analyze the recommended solutions, and has, in comparison with the traditional «intuitive» approach, at least two undeniable merits. First, the accepted assumptions and limitations are clearly formed. Secondly, it is defined precisely, in what sense the decision is optimal. When designing microprocessor systems (systems hereafter), several characteristics have to be taken into account at the same time. In general, when n properties are taken into account for each of the compared systems, then the solution of the task of choosing “the best” system depends on choosing a function-criterion. Such function is called a value function in the article. A simple quadratic function is suggested as the value function, it can be interpreted as the distance in Euclidean space of systems technical data. The system, which corresponds to the point nearest to the point characterizing the master system with “limiting” characteristics, is considered the best one. This function approximates the designer’s system of preferences signifi cantly better than a “classical” linear value function. In conclusion, note that the developed recommendations allow the designer of complex technical systems to analyze the proposed solutions in the early stages of design and, in case of disagreement with them, to indicate the reasons why he considers them inadequate. The designed machine optimization of technical solutions in conjunction with the traditional engineering approach should allow more reasonable choosing the structure of systems at the stage of systems conceptual design.

Power Optimized ALU for Efficient Datapath

With the scaling of technology and the need for high performance and more functionality, power dissipation becomes a major bottleneck for microprocessor systems design. Also clock power can be significant in high performance systems. In this paper, a low power ALU for efficient datapath is proposed. In ALU, based on the observation, that while one functional unit is working other functional units remain idle, but they are connected to clock and all units dissipating significant amount of power. By using clock gating technique, a significant amount of power saving can be achieved at high frequency operations. Functionality of proposed ALU implemented on FPGA is tested using Xilinx tool. Power analysis is carried out using Xilinx’s Xpower analysis tool. It is found that designed ALU is dissipating a power of 24mw when it is operated at a clock frequency of 15MHz and supply voltage of 2.4V under load current of 4.8mA

Power, Thermal, and Reliability Modeling in Nanometer-Scale Microprocessors

System integration and performance requirements are dramatically increasing the power consumptions and power densities of high-performance microprocessors. High power consumption introduces challenges to various aspects of microprocessor and computer system design. It increases the cost of cooling and packaging design, reduces system reliability, complicates power supply circuitry design, and reduces battery life. Researchers have recently dedicated intensive effort to power-related design problems. Modeling is the essential first step toward design optimization. In this article, the power, thermal and reliability modeling problems are explained and recent advances in their accurate and efficient analysis are surveyed.

Concurrent event handling through multithreading

Exceptions have traditionally been used to handle infrequently occurring and unpredictable events during normal program execution. Current trends in microprocessor and operating systems design continue to increase the cost of event handling. Because of the deep pipelines and wide out-of-order superscalar architectures of contemporary microprocessors, an event may need to nullify a large number of in-flight instructions. Large register files require existing software systems to save and restore a substantial amount of process state before executing an exception handler. At the same time, processors are executing in environments that supply higher event frequencies and demand higher performance. We have developed an alternative architecture, event handling, that incorporates multithreading into event handling architectures. Instead of handling the event in the faulting thread's architectural and pipeline registers, the fault handler is forked into its own thread slot and executes concurrently with the faulting thread. Microbenchmark programs show a factor-of-3 speedup for concurrent event handling over a traditional architecture on code that takes frequent exceptions. We also demonstrate substantial speedups on two event-based applications. Concurrent event handling is implemented in the MIT's MAP (Multi-ALU Processor) chip.

High-quality microprocessor system for position, velocity, and acceleration measurements of electric drives

Various aspects of the design of microprocessor systems for velocity, acceleration, and position measurements are considered. The velocity-measuring method described differs from known methods in that it has minimal errors in the range of velocities from fractions of a rotation to the maximum rotation frequency and requires a microprocessor. The position and acceleration are measured at the same time as is the velocity.

Temporal constraint reasoning mechanisms for microprocessor systems diagnosis

Abstract A diagnostic system for microprocessor systems design is being designed and developed. In microprocessor systems diagnosis and design, temporal reasoning about event changes occurring at imprecisely knon time instants is an important issue. The concept of a time range has been proposed to capture the notion of time imprecision in event occurrence. According to this concept, efficient temporal reasoning techniques for constraint satisfaction and propagation of time ranges have been developed for the embedding of domain knowledge in a deep-level constraint model. The imprecision in these events contributes to a certain degree of uncertainty about the correctness of a microprocessor system operation. The proposed system performs worst-case timing analysis. In particular, for the asynchronous bus operation of the MC68000 microprocessor, the sequence of events during a read cycle is traced through an inference process to determine whether any constraint in the model is violated. Satisfactory results have been obtained in a practical implementation of the system using the CLIPS expert system shell.

The interconnection problem

In this paper the problem of interconnecting circuit modules in microprocessor and digital system design is studied. The data transfers are expressed by m sets T i of directed edges between modules. An interconnecting schema, which is given by an assignment of the data transfers to buses, consists of the links between modules and buses. At first we show, that the problem of finding an assignment with minimum number of links is NP-complete. After that we prove that the problem of using a given interconnection schema is NP-complete, too.

Microprocessor systems diagnosis using a time-range approach

In many aspects of microprocessor systems design and diagnosis, temporal reasoning of a sequence of event changes occurring at imprecisely known time instants is often required. By combining the change-based and time-based approaches of temporal logics, the concept of time range is proposed as a key component of an enhanced time structure which captures the notion of time impreciseness in event occurrence. A practical MC68000 CPU-memory interface design problem is used as an extensive example to illustrate the various temporal reasoning techniques derived from this new time structure. Efficient methods for time referencing, constraint satisfaction and propagation of time ranges have been developed for embedding domain knowledge in a deep-level constraint model. It is also shown how different shallow rules (regarded as expert's rule of thumb) for system diagnosis can be generated and explained through an inference process of the constraint model.

Time-range reasoning for microprocessor systems diagnosis: A probabilistic extension

The concept of time range has been recently proposed to capture the notion of time impreciseness in event occurrence, which is found to be of fundamental importance for temporal reasoning in the domain of microprocessor systems design and diagnosis. A possibility measure is implicitly implied in the time-range representation, although it is not properly quantified for effective temporal reasoning. To overcome this shortcoming, time-range probability models based on truncated Gaussian distribution are proposed as viable possibility measures. The use of simplistic assumptions on these probability models has been shown to enhance the deductive capability of existing time-range constraint models. Difficulties in constraint satisfaction and propagation of the probability models are also discussed.

Applying engineering cost analysis in a microprocessor system design course

Engineering design is a crucial component of the under-graduate engineering curriculum. The design process should include not only synthesis based on performance criteria, but also consideration of economic and other factors to achieve cost-effective results. The author discusses the incorporation of engineering cost analysis into a design-oriented course. Specifically, cost analysis for microprocessor system design is discussed, but many of the concepts can be applied to design courses in other areas of engineering. The influence of economic factors on microprocessor system design is discussed and a simple cost analysis model is presented. This integration of cost analysis and use of the model in a course is described. The model is simple enough so that it can be understood with a minimal background in economics, but is complete enough and its use in the course is such that students can study design tradeoffs and gain an understanding of cost analysis in design.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Book Review: Microprocessor Systems Design

Book Review: Microprocessor Systems Design

Various Design Aspects of Microcomputer Applications in Power Engineering

Since 1976, the author is engaged in design, development and installation of process computer and microprocessor systems in power engineering. Based on this experience, the paper illustrates, which design criteria of microprocessor systems are of special importance for application in power plants. Among others, the following aspects are dealt with: selecting the processor type, memory types, process interlace, power supply, mechanical design, software design. To ensure safe operation even in case of a processor system fault, special provisions have to be taken, One section discusses the most commonly used method to achieve sufficient system reliability. Finally, a summary of the applications of microcomputers in power plants is given.

Book Review: Microprocessor Systems Design and Applications

Book Review: Microprocessor Systems Design and Applications

Communication between two microprocessors through common memory

Advances in integration have enabled the design of dual microprocessor systems on a single board for extra processing power. The problems of interfacing these processors are discussed and reasons for preferring shared memory communications rather than I/O are outlined. A system using two 6809 microprocessors is described with the technical problems that were encountered or anticipated in its design. Software developed uses the ‘producer consumer’ analogy and three solutions are demonstrated.

Microprocessor Systems Design. Vol. II: Microcoding, Array Logic and Architectural Design

Microprocessor Systems Design. Vol. II: Microcoding, Array Logic and Architectural Design

Book Review: Modern Microprocessor System Design

Book Review: Modern Microprocessor System Design

Microcomputer Education in India

After discussing various aspects of microcomputer education, the author suggests two courses on microcomputers: 1) an introductory course at the third year, second semester level, and 2) a Microprocessor System Design course at the fourth year, first or second semester level (Institute elective) of the five-year B.Tech. degree program at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay. The author emphasizes that hands-on experience is a must for the microcomputer courses and suggests a typical laboratory setup.