Project-organized education: From FPGA prototyping to ASIC design: Consecutive microelectronic education in designing application-specific hardware

This paper presents an educational concept designed for two complementing courses offered at the Leibniz Universität Hannover that cover FPGA prototyping and ASIC design. One intention of this concept is to teach students concerning the design of digital application-specific hardware based on formal specifications within two semesters. Moreover, the participants gain detailed insights into various aspects of microelectronic systems. Both courses are project-organized in order to further support the students to be well prepared for industry. The goal of this paper is to present the organization structures as well as the used didactic concepts. The success of the course concepts are confirmed by the very good evaluation results obtained by a continuously high count of students.