Work in progress - use of CPU prototyping and logic analyzers to cultivate troubleshooting skills

One skill that is particularly difficult to teach and difficult to master, is the integration of complex systems. Students reach the 90% completion point of a project naively confident that components that work together in simulation will work in hardware. Students in the computer architecture prototyping laboratory often discover this optimism to be unfounded. In the laboratory, students design, build, and test a multicycle CPU (central processing unit), pipelined CPU, and cache memory. Starting Fall 2004, logic analyzers were incorporated to allow for more complete observation of hardware behavior. Previously, all hardware troubleshooting was accomplished through switches, light-emitting diodes, and memory dumps. Student opinions regarding the value of the logic analyzers varied widely, but over 50% of students reported that the logic analyzers helped them to isolate hardware problems, and 65% of students used them to verify correct operation of their designs