Incorporating multicomputer hardware-software design concepts into the undergraduate curriculum through physical implementation

This paper presents a set of activities that have been undertaken within the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez in order to aid in the development of an undergraduate parallel processing academic and research environment. Specifically, a plan of action that allows upper-level ECE students to collaborate in the construction of parallel processing systems using low-cost commercially available FPGA hardware and software prototyping tools is presented. The activities, which require minimal infrastructure, are designed to take the students through a complete system design cycle, from specifications to hardware/software prototype integration and are also geared towards the facilitation of the development of course materials and/or lab modules for the electronics´ sequence of core and elective courses offered by our electrical and computer engineering department. These activities include the design and implementation of the hardware and software interfaces necessary to construct a fully functional microcontroller-based processing node for multiprocessing applications