Imagination announces MIPSfpga 2.0: The complete Teaching material for CPU Architecture

     Imagination Technologies has announced the release of MIPSfpga 2.0, a new version of its highly successful CPU education infrastructure. MIPSfpga 2.0 provides a complete set of materials for teaching computer architecture - including full and open access to the MIPS CPU, allowing students to see the actual RTL program code and study the inner workings of the processor. MIPSfpga 2.0 is part of Imagination University Program (IUP), which is designed to provide students with a unique opportunity to learn using commercial CPU architectures.

     MIPSfpga 2.0 includes two expanded kits: the Getting Started Guide and MIPSfpga Labs, which provide students with practical exercises to gain an in-depth understanding of CPU design. Getting Started Guide helps students and professors build, program and debug MIPS cores on FPGA platforms. This kit contains the unobfuscated RTL program code for the MIPS microAptiv CPU, reference guides, installers for Open OCD and Codescape Essentials, and other important materials. The MIPSfpga Labs suite has a total of 25 hands-on exercises - 16 more than the original MIPSfpga textbook - including an overview of pipeline operations, an exploration of caching, and how to create user-defined instructions (UDI). The third suite, MIPSfpga SoC, focuses on loading and configuring Linux.

     Dr Sarah Harris, associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and co-author of the MIPSfpga 2.0 teaching infrastructure, said: "MIPSfpga 2.0 has dramatically increased the amount of practical practice. The original MIPSfpga exercise focused on manipulating the kernel from the system level. With the new MIPSfpga Labs, students can begin to modify the kernel itself and explore and modify the memory system. For students who want to learn about caching, how pipelining works, how pipelining (stalling) affects performance, and other issues, they can now dig deep into the kernel and find the answers themselves. They can test different methods and really get their hands dirty with learning. This textbook is the first to bring theory, practice, and expertise together and will change the game in CPU architecture education."

     The MIPSfpga was first launched in 2015 and has been adopted by more than 600 colleges and universities worldwide to date. They include Harvey Mudd College, Imperial College London, University College London (UCL), University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and others.

     Robert Owen, Global University Program Manager at Imagination, said: "When the MIPSfpga was first released, we drove a whole new revolution in the teaching of CPU architecture. In the past, no commercial CPU has ever been made available to academia in the form of unencrypted program code. Now, two years later, we have expanded the program further with a greater emphasis on deep, hands-on learning. The engineers of the future need a thorough understanding of the architecture and operation of cpus. They can gain the necessary knowledge and skills with MIPSfpga 2.0."