Introducing Field Programmable Gate Arrays with deeds projects

The introduction to the use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays in a first year course of digital design is nowadays advisable. A self-developed tool that integrates FPGA configuration and testing within Deeds, the simulation suite upon which the course is based, makes the full process straightforward and compatible with the beginners´ skills. The tutorials that accompany the students´ projects provide step-by-step instructions for their execution while, at the same time, serving as a synthetic introduction to Finite State Machines used stand-alone and as system controller and microcomputer programming and interfacing.