JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science 13(7): 959-969, doi: 10.3217/jucs-013-07-0959
Pipeline-scheduling Simulator for Educational Purpose
expand article infoJosé M. Chaves-González, Miguel A. Vega-Rodríguez, Juan A. Gómez-Pulido§, Juan M. Sánchez-Pérez|
‡ University of Extremadura, Spain§ Universidad de Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain| University of Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain
Open Access
Abstract
This paper presents a project that provides both, to professors and to students, a tool that is useful for studying, teaching and learning how pipelines work and how they can be scheduled in an easy and widespread way. The project is called PipeSim, and features static and dynamic pipelines with a very attractive, dynamic and intuitive interface. It is well known that pipeline and pipeline-scheduling are very relevant concepts in computer science studies and it is very important that students can learn these in an easy and reliable way. The simulator makes easy both working in depth about pipeline scheduling and working slowly paying attention in the different stages of the scheduling. However, we designed the simulator knowing that principal users would be students with no experience, so both the execution and the presentation of the results have been carefully developed. In addition to this, to check the success of PipeSim, a survey has been made among some students that used the simulator. Results reveal that this kind of applications has a great acceptance among students, thought they consider that simulators are complements to the lessons given by the professor and never a substitute for them.
Keywords
pipeline, pipeline scheduling, reservation table, collision vector, state diagram, forbidden latency list, delay insertion, educational simulator