SmartEng Tools

Reading

Guides

Each guide explains one topic with worked examples, ends with checked exercises and links the tool you can use to verify the examples. The figures (field tables, cycle diagrams and maps) are generated with the same code as the tools.

RISC-V

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  1. 1How to decode an RV32I instructionA five-step method and one example of each format (R, I, S, B, U and J), with how immediates are rebuilt and the most common mistakes.
  2. 2From machine code to assemblyWe turn an eight-word dump into a readable routine: decode, turn offsets into labels, recognize pseudo-instructions and work out what it does.
  3. 3How a 5-stage pipeline worksLatency versus throughput, how many cycles a sequence takes, why the real speedup is smaller than the number of stages and what breaks the ideal rhythm.
  4. 4RAW hazards, forwarding and stallsWhen a dependency forces a wait, which forwarding paths solve it, why load-use always costs a cycle and how reordering avoids it.

Digital logic

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  1. 1How Karnaugh maps workWhy Gray order makes simplification possible, the grouping rules, essential prime implicants, functions with two solutions and how to get a product of sums.
  2. 2Designing a BCD to 7-segment decoderSeven four-variable functions with don’t cares: truth table, the map for segment e, minimal expressions for every segment and shared products.