This paper describes our experience to date and current plans for a senior-level microelectronics laboratory course on hardware/software codesign. The course utilizes an open-source, soft-core processor deployed on the FPX platform as an integral component of the students? designs. Students write software to execute on a Leon SPARC-compatible processor and write VHDL to implement hardware-accelerated computational functions in FPGA hardware.
Citation:
Roger Chamberlain, John Lockwood, Saurabh Gayen, Richard Hough, Phillip Jones, "Use of a Soft-Core Processor in a Hardware/Software Codesign Laboratory," mse, pp.97-98, 2005 IEEE International Conference on Microelectronic Systems Education (MSE'05), 2005