Section 700: Monday/Wednesday 2:30PM-4:00PM 1500 EECS

MICROPROCESSORS AND MUSIC: AN INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTING SYSTEMS

Peter M. Chen/Erik Hildinger

The goal of this course is for students to experience the complete life cycle of a substantial, creative project in computer science and engineering. Students in this course propose, design, build, and demonstrate their own microprocessor-based music synthesizer.

In the first half of the course, students learn how to create digital logic circuits and use this knowledge to implement and program a working microprocessor on a field-programmable gate array.

In the second half of the course, each team of students designs, builds, and demonstrates their own music synthesizer. The synthesizer is implemented as an assembly-language program running on the team's own microprocessor. Synthesizers use a variety of I/O devices, such as a speaker, microphone, keyboard, mouse, LCD and VGA displays, secure digital card, serial port, and FFT co-processor.

Through the project, students learn technical communication, teamwork, and problem solving. Students write and present reports throughout the semester on the motivation, design, and implementation of their music synthesizer.

Lectures cover topics such as number representation, digital circuits, assembly-language programming, computer architecture, I/O devices, digital audio, technical communication, teamwork, and societal, environmental, and ethical implications of computing systems.

The assignments for the course include weekly labs in the first half of the semester, the main project in the second half of the semester, and written and oral reports throughout.

Prior programming experience is required (e.g., from a high school class or ENGR 101, or by being self taught). Students should be comfortable using the following programming concepts: variables, if-then-else statements, loops, functions, and arrays.

This section will be of interest to students interested in computer engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, or music technology.

Satisfies the Multidisciplinary Design Minor's Introductory Design-Build-Test requirement.