Using Logisim-evolution for Teaching Datapath and Control

Abstract

In our computer organization course, Logisim-evolution has been used for: building on the digital logic design topics, describing instruction-set design choices, implementing a single-cycle datapath and control for an ARMv8-subset architecture in increasing complexity, and demonstrating input/output mechanisms in sufficient detail to recreate the physical bare-metal assembly programming exercises. In this paper, we describe the designs we created and how they are utilized in our computer organization course. The materials are available on GitHub (github.com/mkayaalp/computer-organization-logisim).CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics $\rightarrow$ Computer engineering education; • Computer systems organization $\rightarrow$ Reduced instruction set computing.ACM Reference Format:Mehmet Kayaalp. 2021. Using Logisim-evolution for Teaching Datapath and Control. In Proceedings of WCAE ’21: Workshop on Computer Architecture Education (WCAE ’21). ACM, New York, NY, USA,8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnnn