A soft-core based lab for an introductory microprocessors course

This paper presents a change in the methodology of the laboratory activities in an undergraduate microprocessor systems design course focused on I/O methods and small microprocessors system integration. The laboratory was changed on two main aspects: firstly the assignments are done at home, shortening the time between design activity and experimental verification; secondly a soft-core processor synthesized on an FPGA is exploited to enable the students to exercise hardware design activities on a running system. A suite of development tools combining vendor, third party and in house developed software and hardware cores is presented. These changes are still a work in progress. A transitional version of the course was held during 2011 and the second edition incorporating the rest of the changes is planned for the first half of 2012. Some preliminary results are reported.