A Case for the VMEbus Architecture in Embedded Systems Education

The VMEbus is an IEEE standard architecture upon which many embedded and real-time systems are built. The VMEbus architecture has existed for nearly 25 years and has been used extensively for military, industrial, and aerospace applications. This paper describes the general characteristics of the VMEbus architecture, specifically relating these characteristics to aspects of embedded systems education included as components of the IEEE/ACM CE2004 computer engineering model curriculum. Portions of this model curriculum are currently being implemented at universities across the country as part of an increasing effort to address the need for embedded systems education. This evaluation will identify the strengths and weaknesses of this architecture as a general-purpose embedded systems educational tool. The VMEbus architecture is used in the laboratory component of an undergraduate embedded systems course at the University of Alabama (UA), Tuscaloosa. The assessment results evaluating its effectiveness are presented