Dr. Panayotis (Panos) Papazoglou, affiliate professor on the Nationwide and Kapodistrian College of Athens (NKUA), has designed a modular system that goals to show about how microprocessors and microcomputers work: the {Hardware}-Oriented Microprocessor Simulator (HOMS).
“On this mission, a totally working and mature instructional instrument for studying microprocessors is proposed for the very first time within the literature for larger training within the subject of laptop science and laptop engineering,” Papazoglou writes of the HOMS system. “The proposed instructional instrument [addresses] successfully each limitation of the earlier variations, relies on open supply {hardware}, and will be reproduced by everybody.”
The HOMS system goals to offer perception into how an eight-bit microprocessor-based laptop operates, and does so by breaking all the pieces out into discrete modules. Every register and counter, for instance, is given a devoted two-digit seven-segment show, separate to the system’s main 2.4″ TFT show. Behind every module is an Arduino microcontroller board — both an Arduino UNO or, for the management and show module, an Arduino Mega 2560.
The thought, Papazoglou explains, is to offer college students a bodily object representing a given inside part of a easy microprocessor — fairly than a strong black chip. The design can also be customizable, he says: “The instructor or scholar can use any quantity or kind of blocks for constructing the popular microprocessor structure. Primarily based on the quantity and kind of blocks, a instructor or scholar can check a prototype structure or to increase an operation to smaller steps through the use of extra blocks.”
“The principle benefit of the carried out HOMS instrument,” Papazoglou continues, “is the object-oriented method and the open supply {hardware} which supplies the liberty to any developer not solely to breed the identical instrument but in addition to implement the entire simulator utilizing totally different blocks (with or with out an LCD, buttons, and so on). Notice that the embedded software program makes the distinction.”
The HOMS system is documented in full on Papazoglou’s web site, the place the design is made out there beneath the Artistic Commons Attribution-NoCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license.
