EC453

ARM System Architecture

Pre-Requisite: None
Contact Hours and Credits: (3 -0- 0) 3

Objective: 

The objective of this course is to give the students a thorough exposure to ARM architecture and make the students to learn the ARM programming & Thumb programming models.

Topics Covered:

RISC machine. ARM programmer’s model. ARM Instruction Set. Assembly level language programming. Development tools.

ARM organization. ARM instruction execution. ARM implementation. ARM coprocessor interface. . Interrupt response.

Floating point architecture. Expressions. Conditional statements. Loops. Functions and procedures. Run time environment.

Thumb programmer’s model. Thumb Instruction set. Thumb implementation.

Memory hierarchy. Architectural support for operating system. Memory size and speed. Cache memory management. Operating system. ARM processor chips.

Course Outcomes:

Students are able to

  • CO1: Describe the   programmer’s model of ARM processor and create and test assembly level programming.
  • CO2: Analyze various types of coprocessors and design suitable co-processor interface to ARM processor.
  • CO3: Analyze floating point processor architecture and its architectural support for higher level language.
  • CO4: Become aware of the Thumb mode of operation of ARM.
  • CO5: Identify the architectural support of ARM for operating system and analyze the function of memory Management unit of ARM.

Text Books:

  • S. Furber, ARM System Architecture, Addison-Wesley,1996.
  • Andrew Sloss, Dominic Symes & Chris Wright, ARM system Developer's guide, Elsevier.2005.

Reference Books:

  • Technical reference manual for ARM processor cores, including Cortex, ARM 11, ARM 9 & ARM 7 processor families.
  • User guides and reference manuals for ARM software development and modeling tools.
  • David Seal, ARM Architecture Reference Manual, Addison-Wesley.