Syllabus

Course Description

Hardware implementation of a microcomputer architecture using modern microprocessors and related integrated circuits: clock subsystem, bus drivers, map decoders, R/W memory, ROM, serial and parallel I/O, DMA, interrupts.

Course Catalog Description

Microcomputer architecture design describing the system bus, memory subsystems and peripherals. Unidirectional and bidirectional system bus; SRAM, SDRAM and FLASH memories and their bus interfaces; DMA, interrupt controller, transmitter/receiver, timers, display adapter, A/D and D/A converters and other system peripherals and their interfaces with system bus.

Planned classes

Class #1: Introduction

Introduction to the SJ2 board, and development environment

• Discuss class expectations
• Introduction to SRAM and Flash memory
• Mail out the boards
• Setup slack for class collaboration

Class #2: Board Software Introduction

• SJ2 project code structure
• Schematic review
• Bootloader, Reset and NMI (NXP Boot) pin
• SJ2 board startup
• LPC User Manual pdf brief review
• Clock system
  • Discuss the role of a PLL
  • Peripheral clock divider
• How printf really works

Class #3: Hands-on experiments

• lpc40xx.h memory map review and LPC User manual review
• Bit masking, LPC provided memory map
• LED and switch interface
• SJ2 unit-test framework

Class #4: DMA

• Introduction to the peripheral
• Volatile keyword
• Lab assignment: Setup memory-to-memory transfers

Class #5: Midterm

• First 60 minutes: Review session and Timer Peripheral walkthrough
• Review session, followed by the exam

Class #6: Timer

• Setup HW timer that rolls over each second
• Lab assignment: Build an API to create a precise delay of nanoseconds

Class #7: DMA to GPIO

• Lab assignment: Setup timer to trigger for the DMA
• Transfer a block of memory to the GPIO memory

Class #8: UART driven by GPIO

• UART communication bus
• Lab assignment: Use the timer API to delay by nanoseconds

Class #9: Memory

• SRAM layout
• Flash layout
• Startup and linker script
• EEPROM
• Lab assignment: Write a "peripheral driver"

Class #10: Future facing knowledge: FreeRTOS

• Basics of an RTOS
• Stack pointer
• Lab assignment: Create multiple tasks
• Final exam review

Last class

• Final examination
• Goodbyes