Summary

In the 21st century, embedded systems are the systems of future with cellular phones, smart-phones, tablets becoming the dominant platforms for computing and communication. The ubiquity of information and the associated need for the computation that accompanies it is driving this revolution only to be accelerated by the new paradigms such as the Internet-of-Things (IoT). These platforms are clearly very different in terms of their processing requirements which are very unique: real-time needs, high performance but at low energy, compact-code and data segments, and most importantly ever changing software stack. Such unique requirements have led to a complete redesign and reinvention of the both hardware and the software stack from ground up, for example, brand new processors such as ARM, DSPs, network processors were invented all the way up to new virtual machines such as Dalvik, new operating systems such as Android and new programming models and compiler optimizations.

Expected Learning

The goal of this course is to take a holistic view of the embedded system stack with a focus on processor architectures, instruction sets and the associated advanced compiler optimizations that take advantage of the same.

Syllabus

Embedded Processor Architectures

• Instruction-Level Parallelism
• Design of Instruction Set Architectures
• Embedded Micro-architectures

Software Optimizations

• Compiler Phases
• Register Allocation Foundation
• Register Allocation for Embedded Processors

Advanced Optimizations

• Data Layouts for Embedded Processors
• Data and Code Compaction
• Network Processors

Required Knowledge

It is recommended that students who take this course have previously taken at least an undergraduate-level course in computer architecture. In addition, the students must have a strong background in C and/or C++.