A Framework for Microarchitecture Traces as Abstraction Layer in Computer Architecture Education

Abstract

It is the golden age of practical computer architecture. The rise of open source hardware designs and the open RISC-V instruction set architecture enables us to build courses around real processor cores of varying complexity. While it is desirable to build lab assignments and projects around actual processors, the common presentation of hardware designs in the form of waveforms is not very accessible to students, especially outside of EE. In this paper I present an open source framework for microarchitectural traces along with a simple but efficient visualization tool called pipeline-viewer. It is targeted at computer architecture classes where microarchitecture details are taught and real world demonstration is helpful.ACM Reference Format:Stefan Wallentowitz. 2021. A Framework for Microarchitecture Traces as Abstraction Layer in Computer Architecture Education. In Proceedings of WCAE 2021: Workshop on Computer Architecture Education (WCAE 2021). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnnn