INPUT/OUTPUT PROCESSOR IP CORE- ASHl

Any computer system has an input/output (I/O) subsystem that enables it to
communicate with the outside world via I/O devices (peripherals). The input/output
subsystem provides the point ofaccess for a user to enter or get data through peripherals
that can be used in various aspects of daily-life applications. However, peripherals are
different intheir characteristics in terms of speed (among each otherand with respect to
the computer system) and communication protocols which makes it necessary to have
such specialized communication links as isolated (dedicated) I/O bus or memorymapped
I/O bus between the central processing unit (CPU) and these peripherals. Since
the early history of computers, people have tried to resolve peripheral differences
through such methods as polling, interrupts, direct memory access and I/O processors.
This project aims to build an I/O processor to communicate with peripherals relieving
the CPU from I/O tasks and enabling it to perform other tasks in parallel. The project is
done for its sponsor Aeste Works (M) Sdn Bhd. It is involved with conducting an
extensive study on I/O operations to design a processor that is dedicated to such
operations. Within a period of twenty six weeks, the processor was designed and
verified. It isnow able to perform the I/O tasks ofboth Universal Serial Bus (USB) and
Ethernet. This document is a thesis which presents in details an introduction about the
project along with its literature review, methodology, results and discussion. Itends with
a conclusion andhighlighting some recommendations.