Embedded computer architecture laboratory: a hands-on experience programming embedded systems with resource and energy constraints

Abstract

Embedded systems are complex, requiring multi-disciplinary skills for their design. Developing appropriate educational curricula is a non trivial problem. Embedded system design requires both theoretical and practical understanding. It is common in embedded system education to provide practical laboratory sessions to put into practice what is learnt from lectures and textbooks. In this paper, we present our embedded systems laboratory that is given as part of the Embedded Computer Architecture (ECA) module at Delft University of Technology. Our laboratory provides practical, hands-on experience of programming a multiprocessor embedded system, that is prototyped on an FPGA. We provide details of the hardware platform and software APIs that are provided to the students, along with the laboratory assignment that was given to the ECA students in the 2011-2012 academic year. We present example results that were submitted by groups taking part in the laboratory, and describe the lessons we learned from our own practical experience of giving the laboratory.