MiniMIPS: An 8-Bit MIPS in an FPGA for Educational Purposes

Expectations of Electrical Engineering students about their courses have changed over the years. Even though the basic principles of Digital Electronics remain the same, tools and laboratory activities need to accommodate more demanding expectations. This paper presents MiniMIPS: an 8-bit implementa...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ortega-Sanchez, Cesar
Other Authors: P. Athanas
Format: Conference Paper
Published: IEEE Computer Society 2011
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/29120
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author Ortega-Sanchez, Cesar
author2 P. Athanas
author_facet P. Athanas
Ortega-Sanchez, Cesar
author_sort Ortega-Sanchez, Cesar
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Expectations of Electrical Engineering students about their courses have changed over the years. Even though the basic principles of Digital Electronics remain the same, tools and laboratory activities need to accommodate more demanding expectations. This paper presents MiniMIPS: an 8-bit implementation of the MIPS’s single-cycle architecture for educational purposes. The MiniMIPS is targeted to the BASYS Spartan 3E development board. The user interface consists of DIP switches, push-buttons, LEDs and four 7-segment displays. The instruction set consists of 9 instructions and 3 instruction formats. Programs for the MiniMIPS are developed in a custom-made assembler/simulator tool, also presented in this paper. A MiniMIPS assembly program to generate the Fibonacci series is presented as an example. A description of laboratory tasks currently used is offered.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-291202023-01-27T05:52:08Z MiniMIPS: An 8-Bit MIPS in an FPGA for Educational Purposes Ortega-Sanchez, Cesar P. Athanas J. Becker R. Cumplido FPGAs computer architecture MIPS hardware for education Expectations of Electrical Engineering students about their courses have changed over the years. Even though the basic principles of Digital Electronics remain the same, tools and laboratory activities need to accommodate more demanding expectations. This paper presents MiniMIPS: an 8-bit implementation of the MIPS’s single-cycle architecture for educational purposes. The MiniMIPS is targeted to the BASYS Spartan 3E development board. The user interface consists of DIP switches, push-buttons, LEDs and four 7-segment displays. The instruction set consists of 9 instructions and 3 instruction formats. Programs for the MiniMIPS are developed in a custom-made assembler/simulator tool, also presented in this paper. A MiniMIPS assembly program to generate the Fibonacci series is presented as an example. A description of laboratory tasks currently used is offered. 2011 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/29120 10.1109/ReConFig.2011.62 IEEE Computer Society restricted
spellingShingle FPGAs
computer architecture
MIPS
hardware for education
Ortega-Sanchez, Cesar
MiniMIPS: An 8-Bit MIPS in an FPGA for Educational Purposes
title MiniMIPS: An 8-Bit MIPS in an FPGA for Educational Purposes
title_full MiniMIPS: An 8-Bit MIPS in an FPGA for Educational Purposes
title_fullStr MiniMIPS: An 8-Bit MIPS in an FPGA for Educational Purposes
title_full_unstemmed MiniMIPS: An 8-Bit MIPS in an FPGA for Educational Purposes
title_short MiniMIPS: An 8-Bit MIPS in an FPGA for Educational Purposes
title_sort minimips: an 8-bit mips in an fpga for educational purposes
topic FPGAs
computer architecture
MIPS
hardware for education
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/29120