Introduction to System on Chip Design Education Kit

Course Aim

To produce students with solid introductory knowledge on the basics of SoC design and key practical skills required to implement a simple SoC on an FPGA and write embedded programs targeted at the microprocessor to control the peripherals.

Learning Outcomes

• Knowledge and understanding of:
  • The advantages and limitations of SoC.
  • The key features of the Arm Cortex-M0 processor architecture.
  • How to write simple and power efficient Arm assembly code using Arm instruction sets.
  • The functions of the Address decoder and subordinate multiplexor in the AHB-Lite bus system
• Intellectual
  • Outline the components of the AHB VGA peripheral and describe their functions.
  • Outline the components of the AHB UART peripheral and describe their functions.
  • Outline the components of the AHB Timer, GPIO and 7-segment display peripherals and describe their functions.
  • Explain the concepts of interrupts and exceptions and the process by which the processor handles each.
  • Describe the Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS) and identify how to write device drivers to access AHB peripherals.
  • Describe the advantages of the use of APIs over low -level programming.
• Practical
  • Implement a simple SoC which consist of Cortex-M0 processor, AHB-Lite bus and AHB peripherals (Memory, LED, VGA) on an FPGA and write a simple program to display text on a connected VGA.
  • Implement an SoC which contains a Cortex-M0 processor, AHB-Lite bus and AHB peripherals (Program memory and LED, VGA, UART, Timer, GPIO and 7-Segment) on an FPGA and write simple programs to control the peripherals.
  • Implement the AHB timer and UART interrupt mechanism at both hardware and software domains by adding appropriate interrupt registers and writing suitable interrupt handler.
  • Implement a timer interrupt handler and UART interrupt handler in a high-level language such as C.

Syllabus