WepSIM: Simulador de un procesador elemental con unidad de control microprogramada

WepSIM es un simulador de un procesador elemental con unidad de control microprogramada basado en el procesador diseñado por el personal del grupo de investigación ARCOS del Departamento de Informática de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid para la docencia en la asignatura Estructura de Computadores. Con esta herramienta se ofrece una visión integrada de la microprogramación de un computador y la programación en lenguaje ensamblador, dando la posibilidad de especificar distintos juegos de instrucciones y ofreciendo un nivel de detalle a nivel de ciclo de reloj. Gracias al diseño modular propuesto en el cual está basado este simulador, es posible añadir, modificar o quitar elementos existentes al modelo hardware diseñado. Debido a que solo precisa de un navegador web, es posible utilizarlo en casi cualquier momento y dispositivo. Todas estas características, hacen de WepSIM el primer simulador docente que unifica la microprogramación y la programación en lenguaje ensamblador permitiendo una fácil personalización del modelo hardware a simular y el uso de diferentes juegos de instrucciones. Mediante este simulador se busca facilitar la enseñanza y aprendizaje en el área docente de Estructura y Arquitectura de Computadores.eaching the topics related to the architecture of a computer is a basic and fundamental part of the training of computer science students. In these subjects, students achieve a low-level vision and understanding of the components of a computer. In order to facilitate the correctly understanding of the theoretical foundations, it is necessary to use practical classes, where the student should interact with the architecture of a computer in a similar way to that one explained in theory and also manage to extrapolate the theoretical foundations to the actual behavior. One of the main problems when preparing these practical classes is to emulate the necessary resources seen in the theoretical classes. Currently, there are different tools that enable the emulation of different components of a computer. However, there is a lack of tools that unify the simulation of these components, being a problem when trying to obtain a global view of the operation of a computer. These tools can be classified into two main types: emulators and simulators. An emulator is a software that imitates the behavior of a computer, so that programs designed for a particular architecture can be executed in a different one. On the other hand, a simulator is a software that aims to reproduce the behavior of a computer, but with a lower level of realism than the emulators. There are different simulators that can be used in order to work with the main aspects treated in the subjects of “Computer Architecture and Computer Sctructure” such as assembler, cache, etc. Most of these simulators are focused on a specific type of simulation, which implies that, to obtain a global vision on the architecture of the computer several simulators are needed. Therefore, it is much better to count with a tool that offers a complete simulation of the architecture and combines the maximum possible functionalities. We identify another important problem: most of the simulators are designed for running as PC applications. One of the goals we put forward with WepSIM is that it could be used in smartphones or tablets in order to offer greater flexibility in its usage to the student. In addition to having a portable simulator, it must also be as self-contained as possible. Therefore, it must integrate support for its use inside the tool(not as a separate document that serves as a user manual to be printed), allowing the end-user to make full use of the application without the need of getting out of it. In conclusion, we have considered how to offer a simulator that is simple and modular, and that at the same time allows to integrate the teaching of the microprogramming language with programming in assembly. In particular, it can be used to microprogram a customized instruction set and observe the basic operation of a processor, as well as to create assembler programs based on the assembler defined by the above microcode. This is of great help, for example, for system programing, since it is possible to follow how the software interacts in assembly with the hardware in the treatment of interruptions. The idea is to offer a simulator that offers a global vision of a computer, integrating both hardware and software components and also avoiding the extra time involved in learning different tools.Ingeniería Informátic