Microprocessor Systems Laboratory

Microprocessors and embedded systems have become ubiquitous elements of almost every device and system in use today ranging from automotive, to aerospace, to medical uses and applications.

In the Microprocessor Systems Laboratory, electrical, computer and software engineers learn the fundamentals of microprocessor integration and microprogramming including analog and digital input/output to devices ranging from stepper motors to liquid crystal displays. Students start with small-scale, low-power single core System-on-Chip and Internet-of-Things microprocessors and work their way up to larger scalable microprocessor systems for real-time and human computer interaction applications. Students make use of embedded integrated development tools, the Analog Discovery combined oscilloscope and logic analyzer, and circuit prototyping equipment to build complete hardware, firmware, and software solutions.  

The lab is also equipped with larger-scale general-purpose graphics co-processor Systems-on-Chip with more than 256 processors running embedded Linux. Computer and software engineering focused students can leverage basic microprogramming skills to progress from microprocessor fundamentals through additional course work and hands-on exercises to build interactive machine vision, graphical user interface and real-time applications.  

Overall, the Microprocessor Systems Laboratory provides students with unbounded embedded computing capability to explore construction and prototyping of a wide range of low-level to scalable real-world microprocessor-based systems.

Equipment

Microprocessors Equipment:

• 15 Texas Instruments Tiva C-Series TM4C123G prototyping System-on-Chip boards
• 9 Analog Discovery combined Oscilloscope and Logic Analyzer systems
• Windows workstations for use with IAR or Code Composer integrated development environments for use with USB/JTAG
• 9 GW Instek 30300 current limiting power supplies,
• Prototyping boards, components for analog and digital circuit construction

Advanced Processors Equipment:

• 9 Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) Linux mini-desktop systems
• 9 NVIDIA Jetson GP-GPU (General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit) embedded systems
• 9 1280x720 pixel USB cameras