Basic Information

  • Course Code: EE 309
  • Course Name: Microprocessor
  • Course Offered In: Spring 2022
  • Instructors: Virendra Singh
  • Prerequisites: EE 224- Digital Systems
  • Difficulty (on a scale of 5): 3

Course Content

8085/8051 Architecture, ISA and Programming, RISC/ CISC Design, Timers and Interrupts, I/O device interfacing, Pipelined Architecture with Hazard control, Memory system design

Feedback on Lectures

Everything was taught in a detailed manner and nothing was left hanging. Instructor took extra sessions on weekends to cover entirety of the topic and he would actively encourage doubts and discussion in his lectures. Every lecture started with a short recap of previous lecture so we felt connected with whatever further was being taught. Everything is taught on board and it’s highly recommended to take notes during lectures as they will be really helpful in later half of the course.

Feedback on Evaluations

Evaluation for the course was done based on weekly quizzes, midsem, endsem and assignment with a project towards the end of course. All exams were open book with no time constraint and comprised of question which were difficult to solve and could be answered correctly only if one has clarity of the topic. Solution for quiz questions were given next day during lectures. Endsem Examination comprised of many challenging questions and would take most of us spend 9 - 11 hours over it. Instructor provided us lunch and tea and I must say it was a unique experience. Talking about Assignment and Project which were of utmost importance in this course. Assignment comprised of ideation of design of Pipelined implementation of IITB-RISC processor for which we were provided with its ISA. Project was to code this design on VHDL and then test it on an FPGA. As easy it might sound, you will understand the pain of debugging while implementing. It was a team project with team’s comprising max 4 members, very few teams were able to run their processor without error on FPGA, but this project will certainly familiarise with the difficulties faced in real life in microprocessor architecture design. Grading was on lenient side for this course.

Study Material and Resources

Lecture notes were very important for getting clarity of the subject, however all exams had questions based on programming and application of those concepts. For the 1st half of the course. “The 8051 Microcontroller” by Muhammad Ali Mazidi and Kenneth Ayala(2 different books) were good for problem solving especially for programming questions. For the post midsem part of the semester which discussed RISC/CISC Design and Pipelined implementation lecture notes were sufficient.

Follow-up Courses

EE337- Microprocessor Lab ,EE739-Processor Design, CS683/EE748- Advanced Computer Architecture.

Final Takeaway

This course build up on your knowledge of digital systems, so if you were intrigued by the concepts taught in digital systems it will be a very interesting course. One also learns basic microprocessor design which is base building for moving ahead in the field of Computer Architecture.