Additional Lab Questions

Lab 1: Serial Communication
Q: What is a baud rate. Show how we got TH1 = 0xe6. Be sure to show the equation, and show your work.

Lab 2: A/D Conversion
Q: Explain why a low-to-high transistion is needed on the the WR input.

Lab 3: Introduction to VHDL Simulation and Synthesis
Q: None.

Lab 4: Music Generator
Q: Explain what xdata is and how it is used to communicate with the FPGA.

Lab 5: A Simplified VHDL UART
Q: Explain how the UART clock divider works and explain what is it's purpose.

Lab 6: Controlling A Stepper Motor
Q: Explain the purpose of the MC3479P IC. If this IC was not available to us what steps would we have to take to control the stepper motor.

Lab 7: Interfacing - Converting 8-Bit LCD Communication to 4-Bit
Q: Explain how the LCD know whether communicate using the 8-bit or 4-bit protocol.

Lab 8: Concurrency Issues
Q1: A common mistake in providing mutual exclusion is to use a flag to signify whether or not there is a process executing in the critical region. Whenever a process wants to enter the critical region, it checks to see if the flag is set. If it is, it will simply wait until the flag is not set (i.e. while(flag);). When a process enters the critical region, the flag is set. When a process leaves the critical region, the flag is reset. Explain why this does not gaurantee mutual exclusion. Also, discuss any other problems with this solution that you can think of.
Q2: Explain how your solution to the producer/consumer problem guarantees there won't ever be any conflicts between the producer and the consumer. Also, discuss the effect on performance and functionality if busy waiting (i.e. while(flag)) was used instead of semaphores.

Lab 9: Concurrency Issues Continued
Q1: Explain why your solution for the knitting nannies problem is correct. Also identify the critical region, and explain how the circular wait for semaphores can cause deadlock.
Q2: The knitting nannies problem has many solutions. Include pseudo-code for an alternative soltuion to the knitting nannies problem. Explain the benefits/drawback of each solution. Which do you think is better? Why?
Q3: Write pseudo-code for designing the same tempurature network system using a single task and a delay function, and discuss the advantage/disadvantage of the multi-task versus single-task versions.

Lab 10: Trimedia
Q: None.

Lab 12: Temperature Sensor Acuqasition Module
See Lab 12 Report/Grading Guidelines on the class page.