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