University of California at Berkeley
College of Engineering
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

CS61CL, Summer 2009

HW 7: Designing Your CPU

Stage 2 of 3 in your MIPS CPU

Staff in charge: Paul Pearce

Due Thursday, July 30, 2009 @ 9:30am

Clarifications posted in red

Assignment

The goal for this assignment is to create a design document to aid you in the creation of the MIPS CPU.

To get started, please read over the Project 3 specification throughly.

Once you feel you are comfortable with the requirements and understand the project, begin working on your design.

What is a design doc?

A design document is a high level functional description of your project. Things we are looking for here are descriptions of how you plan on solving problems, roughly how you plan to wire components together, and a rough idea of what you expect your design to look like.

Things that don't belong in a design document are exact solutions, and (although not relevant for this project) code.

This design document is just a informal exercise to get you thinking about your project, as well as expose you to design procedures you'll encounter in future classes and jobs.

Requirements

Your design document is required to be roughly 1-2 double spaced typed pages. You are expected to hit on all major pieces of the design: Datapath, Control, Register File, and ALU (yes, this means you are going to be including design details from Homework 6). The file must be .pdf format (we'll also accept .doc or .rtf if you are unable to create a pdf). The file must be correctly viewable on one of the 271 Soda lab machines (more on why later).

In addition to the design document, you are required to produce several logisim screen captures showing a rough outline of your datapath, as well as a view of your register file. Details that are important to show of the register file are the control to handle the input and output of the registers. Place the screen captures in the same file as your design document, and include whatever text you feel is necessary to explain your design of the key components.

This assignment is designed to be fairly open-ended, allowing you to explore whatever style of design document you wish to develop. Pretty much anything goes so long as your document adequately describes your design in a clear manor. Design documents will be graded on effort, not correctness. This DOES NOT mean you are free to hand in poor work that doesn't make sense. Such submissions will not receive credit.

Submission Details

Create a directory named 'hw7' containing a README, and design_document.pdf (.doc or .rtf is also acceptable if you are unable to create a pdf). While in that directory, run 'submit hw7'.

Checkoff Details

We will be going over your design document with you during your lab on Thursday July 30th. Therefore it is CRITICAL that you get your design document on-time! You will NOT be allowed to use slip days for this assignment! This also means you MUST attend Lab on Thursday July 30th, as there will be no other time for checkoffs. We are doing this so we can give you feedback going forward into Project 3, before it's due. Please print out a copy of your submission (pdf, and pictures) and bring it with you to Lab on Thursday!