Visualizing the MMIX superscalar pipeline: not only for teaching purposes

  • Authors:

  • Axel Böttcher

  • Affiliations:

  • Munich University of Applied Sciences

  • Venue:
  • WCAE '04 Proceedings of the 2004 workshop on Computer architecture education: held in conjunction with the 31st International Symposium on Computer Architecture
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

In this paper, we introduce an environment to visualize the internal activities of superscalar processors. The visualization environment is dedicated to the MMIX-processor. It uses its pipeline simulator but is implemented as a Plug-In to the Eclipse platform. This environment helps to teach Computer Architecture on a less abstract level. It will be seen that a lot about hardware can be learnt by using a piece of software. Additionally, this visualization environment would introduce a state of the art IDE and familiarize the students with it. This is a nice and important side effect for general educational purposes.