A Course to Train Digital Hardware Designers for Industry

Author

Vélez, Igone ; Sevillano, Juan F.

Author_Institution

Univ. of Navarra, San Sebastian

Volume

50

Issue

3

fYear

2007

Firstpage

236

Lastpage

243

Abstract

A new methodology to teach digital hardware design with a limited time budget is presented. The emphasis is placed on training hardware engineers to answer the needs of the industry. The proposed course is focused on teaching how to design rather than just teaching a hardware description language or a set of tools. This goal is achieved through lectures, tutorials, and small projects. Projects are the core of the proposed methodology and are structured in a pedagogical format. The students must follow the entire design process in all the projects. They receive a written specification that they must interpret. The deliverables are a functionally verified code that meets some synthesis constraints and a report that documents their design. Histograms of the grades are used as a tool to study the student´s progress.

Keywords

CAD; computer aided instruction; educational courses; hardware description languages; product design; digital hardware design; hardware description language; hardware engineer training; time budget; Design automation; Design engineering; Education; Hardware design languages; Industrial training; Integrated circuit synthesis; Laboratories; Process design; Proposals; Very high speed integrated circuits; Digital design; digital systems; teaching laboratory; very high speed integrated circuit hardware description language (VHDL);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Education, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9359

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TE.2007.900027

Filename

4287127