Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Objectives At the completion of the subject, students should be able to understand the structure, instruction sets and programming of advanced 16/32 bit microprocessor architectures; understand the circuit design principles using 16/32 bit microprocessors and their peripheral support chips; design 16/32bit microprocessor systems at the electronic signal level and at the overall functional level; write assembly language programmes for Motorola M680x0 and Intel 80x86 microprocessor-based systems that provide low-level support for operating systems, exploit the interrupt and exception processing implementations, and exploit the memory management implementations; and understand the principles of I/O peripheral interfacing to the above microprocessor families via a selection of industry standard buses.
Synopsis This subject builds on the earlier work in 8-bit microprocessors done in RDT1210, and extends the study to 16/32-bit processors and their applications.. The syllabus covers the following. Introduction to 16- and 32-bit microprocessors. Architecture: registers, data flow logic, op-codes, addressing modes, instruction set. Memory management, direct memory access. Programming tools: compilers, assemblers, debuggers. Interfacing: parallel, serial, disk, timers. Exceptions: traps and interrupts.
Assessment Examination: 60% + Assignment and practical work: 40%