A hardware simulator for teaching CPU design

This presentation describes a GUI-based tool for teaching CPU design to computer architecture students. A datapath builder allows microarchitecture building blocks, such as registers, ALUs, and multiplexors, to be laid out and wired together. A control builder allows a control state machine to be developed for the datapath. Because the processor design is simulated within a full PC emulator, student-designed processors can use emulated devices, such as drives, video, and I/O ports. A tutorial teaches students to use the simulator to build and simulate a pipelined RISC processor.