Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Objectives At the completion of the subject students should understand the architecture and design methodology for a simple microprocessor system; understand the execution of a typical instruction in terms of the bus transfers, and the major control signals needed for the fetch and execute phases; understand the bus signal timing of this CPU to the extent that the operation of simple interface circuits can be understood; and be competent in simple assembly language programming of a representative 8-bit microprocessor.
Synopsis In this subject students are introduced to microprocessor fundamentals: CPU registers, register transfer language, instruction op-codes, addressing modes, instruction set, components and buses, instruction execution; assembly language: mnemonics, assemblers, directives, development systems and simulators; data handling, arithmetic and logical operations, bit operations, branching, condition codes, stack operations; algorithms: sorts, data conversions, multiply and divide, interrupt handlers; hardware: CPU bus signals, bus demultiplexing, I/O methods, address decoding, simple I/O interface design, programmable interfacing components.
Assessment Examination (3 hours): 55% + Practical work: 30% + Tests and assignment and tutorial work: 15%