general introduction:
architectures for computational units: RAM machine, parallel computing and its problems for
shared memory, distributed memory and MPI, vector machines, communication time, conflicts,
control over the system and hardness of programming;
special purpose circuits: market situation, basic information on manufacturing process;
idea of FPGA: matrix structure, communication organization
design of single purpose processor: combinational logic, sequential logic, designing
custom single-purpose processor, run time design
general purpose processors: basic architecture: datapath, control unit, ...,
architecture design trade-offs, programmers point of view, overview of
properties and processor choice
interfacing : control mechanism and protocol basics, addressing, interrupts, direct memory access, priority arbiters, parallel versus serial communication, wireless communication,
error detection and correction, examples: I2C, CAN, Bluetooth, 802.11