An affordable post-silicon testing framework applied to a RISC-V based microcontroller

The RISC-V architecture is a very attractive option for developing application specific systems needing an affordable yet efficient central processing unit. Post-silicon validation on RISC-V applications has been done in industry for a while, however documentation is scarce. This paper proposes a practical low-cost post-silicon testing framework applied to a RISC-V RV32I based microcontroller. The framework uses FPGA-based emulation as a cornerstone to test the microcontroller before and after its fabrication. The platform only requires a handful of elements like the FPGA, a PC, the fabricated chip and some discrete components, without losing the capacity to functionally validate the design under test and save development testing time by using a re-utilize philosophy.Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovació

Microcontroller Implementation for Automatic Smart Bell

This study aims to design automatic school bell hardware based on the ATmega32 microcontroller, design automatic school bell software based on the ATmega32 microcontroller using Basic programming language, and test the performance of the automatic school bell based on the ATmega32 microcontroller. This automatic school bell uses a minimum system of ATmega32 microcontrollers which equipped with data input from the push button, LCD to display character output, ISD2560 to output sound, and a timer taken from DS1307 RTC. This research is a Research or Development (R & D) research. This research is carried out through two stages of design. The first stage is the stage of hardware design. The second stage is the stage of software design. Programs are made using the Basic programming language using the Bascom-AVR application. The results of the product were tested using the black box method with two stages. In the first stage, software testing uses a series of simulations on the Proteus 7 Professional application. The second stage, testing hardware

EDUCATIONAL PROCESSOR

This report discusses the overview of the chosen project, which is an Educational Processor. The objective of this project is to develop a simple processor with TTL logic for educational purpose. This processor will be used as a learning tool for Computer System Architecture class. To complete this project, the scope of study will cover the computer system architecture and Central Processing Unit (CPU). The CPU datapath design and hardware circuit design is based on the MIPS single-cycle processor. The methodologies that will be involved in this project are design and validation phase, constructing the hardware and then interfacing phase through serial communication between CPU and a graphic user interface using microcontroller. The prototype would be used as a learning tool in Computer System Architecture class and to assist student in understanding the computer architecture

EKKO: an open-source RISC-V soft-core microcontroller

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia Eletrónica Industrial e Computadores (especialização em Sistemas Embebidos e Computadores)Com o surgimento da Internet das Coisas (IoT em inglês) nos últimos anos, o número de “coisas” conectadas está a crescer a um ritmo bastante rápido. Estes dispositivos tornaram-se rapidamente parte do nosso dia a dia e já podem ser encontrados nos mais diversos domínios de aplicação, tais como, telecomunicações, saúde, agricultura, e automação industrial. Devido a este crescimento exponencial, a demanda por sistemas embebidos é cada vez maior, trazendo assim diversos desafios no seu desenvolvimento. De todos os desafios, o time-to-market e os custos de desenvolvimento são de inegável importância, logo, a escolha de uma plataforma de desenvolvimento adequada é essencial no desenho destes sistemas. Devido a este novo paradigma, o grupo de investigação da Universidade do Minho onde esta dissertação se insere tem desenvolvido aplicações neste domínio. No entanto, as atuais plataformas de desenvolvimento utilizadas são complexas, têm custos associados e são de código fechado. Por estas razões, o grupo de investigação tem interesse em ter a sua própria plataforma de desenvolvimento. De modo a solucionar os problemas enumerados acima, esta dissertação tem como objetivo desenvolver uma plataforma de desenvolvimento tanto para hardware como para software. A plataforma deve ser simples de utilizar e open-source, reduzindo assim os custos e a tornando a gestão de licenças mais simples. Para além disto, o facto de o sistema ser de código aberto faz também com que este possa ser facilmente estendido e customizado de acordo com os requisitos da aplicação. Neste sentido, esta dissertação apresenta um soft-core microcontroller, o qual contem um processador RISC-V, uma RAM, uma unidade de depuração, um temporizador, um periférico I2C e um barra mento AXI. Em adição, este contem também um kit de desenvolvimento de software (SDK em inglês), o qual inclui um depurador, a opção de utilizar o sistema operativo Azure RTOS ThreadX, e outras ferramentas importantes, tornando o ciclo de desenvolvimento mais fácil, rápido e seguro.With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) in most recent years, the number of connected “things” is increasing quickly. These devices rapidly became part of our daily lives and can be found in the most different applications domains, such as telecommunications, health care, agriculture and industrial automation. With this exponential growth, the demand for embedded devices is increasing, bringing several challenges to the development of these systems. From these challenges, the time-to-market and development costs are undeniable extremely important. Thus, choosing a suitable development platform is essential when designing an embedded system. Due to this new paradigm, the University of Minho research group where this dissertation fits has been developing applications in this domain. However, the current development platforms are complex, have associated costs and are closed-source. For these reasons, the research group has interesting in having its development platform. To solve these problems, this dissertation aims to build a development platform for both hardware and software. The platform must be simple and open-source, reducing development costs and simplifying license management. Besides, due to its open nature, it will also be easier to extend and modify the system according to the application’s needs. In this context, this dissertation presents EKKO, an open-source soft-core microcontroller that contains a RISC-V core, an on-chip RAM, a debug unit, a timer and an I2C peripheral, and an AXI bus. In addition, it also contains a Software Development Kit (SDK), which includes a debugger, the option to use Azure RTOS ThreadX, and other crucial tools, turning the development cycle more accessible, faster and safer

A framework for FPGA functional units in high performance computing

FPGAs make it practical to speed up a program by defining hardware functional units that perform calculations faster than can be achieved in software. Specialised digital circuits avoid the overhead of executing sequences of instructions, and they make available the massive parallelism of the components. The FPGA operates as a coprocessor controlled by a conventional computer. An application that combines software with hardware in this way needs an interface between a communications port to the processor and the signals connected to the functional units. We present a framework that supports the design of such systems. The framework consists of a generic controller circuit defined in VHDL that can be configured by the user according to the needs of the functional units and the I/O channel. The controller contains a register file and a pipelined programmable register transfer machine, and it supports the design of both stateless and stateful functional units. Two examples are described: the implementation of a set of basic stateless arithmetic functional units, and the implementation of a stateful algorithm that exploits circuit parallelism

HOME SECURITY SYSTEM: SMOKE DETECTOR CIRCUIT, TEMPERATURE DETECTOR CIRCUIT WITH KEYPAD AND LCD INTERFACE

The Home Security System is design to develop a security system that is affordable and easy to use. This system will provide protection when user is at home and not at home. It will have a LCD display as an easy and friendly interface and a keypad as a main controller to the whole system. The keypad will allow a communication between the user and the system. This project is divided into three main parts which are the smoke detector circuit implementation, temperature detector implementation and the LCD and keypad implementation. The three parts have slightly different methodology but in overall, the project started by doing research on the circuits, the implementation of the circuits and the implementation of the LCD display and keypad. The system will have a complete home security system that will enable user to control the circuits with a keypad. In future, more circuits will be included in the system that will provide more diversity in home security system

Prototype Of Mask Recognition And Body Temperature In Real Time With Amg8833 Thermal Cam Sensor For Covid-19 Early Warning Based On Minicomputer

On April 19, 2020, the Republican Covid Task Force declared that the Covid-19 pandemic was a national disaster in Indonesia. At that time it was confirmed that there were 6575 cases and an increase of 5.23% compared to the previous day, then there were 5307 people in treatment which increased by 5.55% compared to the previous day, it was reported that 582 people died, which increased by 8.79 % compared to the previous day, and 686 recovered patients. WHO reports that the case fatality rate (CFR) or the death rate of Covid-19 cases in Indonesia reached 8.3%, which is twice the world's CFR. In this study, the main focus is to detect masks and body temperature used by visitors with various variations of masks on the market today, and next is to control the servo motor according to the detection conditions whether using a mask in real-time. Based on research on the system that has been tested, it shows that the components used to generate heat are very effectively used and can work as expected, and the MobilenetV2 method applied to the Raspberry Pi as the brain of the system can work as expected and has an accuracy rate of 99%. The AMG8833 sensor can read effectively at a maximum distance of 30 cm, the temperature reading deviation level is 0.1⁰C