Course Catalog 2007-2008

TKT-3526 PROCESSOR DESIGN, 5 cr
Processor Design

Courses persons responsible
Jari Nurmi

Lecturers
Tapani Ahonen
Jari Nurmi

Implementations
Person responsible: Jari Nurmi
  Period 1 Period 2 Period 3 Period 4 Period 5 Summer
Lecture - - 2 h/week 2 h/week - -
Exam  
(Timetable for academic year 2007-2008)

Objectives
To deepen the student's knowledge and skills in processor operating principles and implementation. To learn processor design methodology in practice.

Content
Content Core content Complementary knowledge Specialist knowledge
1. Processor terminology brush-up.  Deeper understanding of phenomena behind the various terms related to processors. Economic impact of processor hardware implementations.
 		   
2. Processor design principles and design steps. Design of arithmetic, control and memory subsystems.  Application-specific processor specification and design.  Available design tools and other utilities for processor design. 
3. Instruction set design based on requirements. Instruction coding and its impact on implementation area, power consumption and performance.  Variable-length instructions, use of operation modes in processors.  Instruction memory compression.
 
4. Requirements for embedded system processors. Processor cores as design blocks. DSP processor specifics.
 		 Basics of parallel architecture from the implementation point of view.  Co-processors, hardware accelerators. 
5. Processor benchmarks and interpretation of their results.  Critical assessment of different benchmarks.    

Requirements for completing the course
Exam and accepted exercise works.

Evaluation criteria for the course

  • Used assessment scale is numeric (1-5)

    • Study material
    Type Name Auhor ISBN URL Edition, availability... Exam material Language
    Other online content Web-based learning tasks Jari Nurmi       Yes  English 
    Book Processor Design: System-on-Chip Computing for ASICs and FPGAs Jari Nurmi     Springer, April 2007 No  English 

    Prerequisites
    Code Course Credits M/R
    TKT-3200 TKT-3200 Computer Architecture I 5 Mandatory
    TKT-3400 TKT-3400 Computer Architecture II 5 Recommendable
    TKT-3516 TKT-3516 Signal Processors 5 Recommendable

    Prequisite relations (Sign up to TUT Intranet required)

    Remarks

    The course is to a large extent based on web-based learning tasks and learning-by-doing in the exercise works. The book is only covered selectively in this course, but it is also a useful reference for further study of the topic.

  • The course is suitable for postgraduate studies.

    • Distance learning

  • ITC utilized during the course

    • - In information distribution via homepage, newsgroups or mailing lists, e.g. current issues, timetables
    - In compiling teaching material, particularly for online use or other electronic media

  • Estimate as a percentage of the implementation of the course

    • - Contact teaching: 20 %
    - Distance learning: 40 %
    - Proportion of a student's independent study: 40 %

    Scaling
    Methods of instructionHours
    Lectures 20
    Assignments 62
    Information and communication technology 40

    Other scaledHours
    Preparation for exam 8
    Exam/midterm exam 3
    Total sum 133

    Principles and starting points related to the instruction and learning of the course

  • The most essential issues are addressed in web-based learning tasks. Live meetings are used to schedule the execution of the course, and the exercise works are used to verify the comprehension of design principles and methodology.

    • Course homepage

    Last modified 12.10.2007
    Modified byOlli Vainio