INTRODUCING LABORATORIES WITH SOFT PROCESSOR CORES USING FPGAS INTO THE COMPUTER ENGINEERING CURRICULUM

Soft processor cores are becoming an important component in state-of-the-art Systems-on-a-Programmable-Chip (SoPC) implementations. An SoPC design is a complete electronic system that is built on a reconfigurable integrated circuit, usually in the form of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). This paper will discuss the introduction of soft processor design into the courses within the Computer Engineering curriculum at the University of Texas at Tyler. Laboratories that utilize soft processor core design in our FPGA Design course and designs consisting of an array of soft processor cores to emulate multiprocessor designs in our Computer Architecture course will be described. Assessment in the form of project results, surveys, and instructor observation will be given.