Reconfigurable high-speed platform: shifting the paradigm in education, research and engineering

Keeping students acclimatized with the increasingly rapid advancement in technology requires major changes in the manner in which education is designed and conducted. With the utilization of more sophisticated equipment in the classroom and laboratory, students are better exposed to real-world design techniques and multidisciplinary problem-solving, providing a positive link between education and industry. Much of the impetus for this change is the availability of more affordable and easy to use microcontrollers and embedded systems, including reconfigurable multipurpose hardware platforms. At the heart of this paradigm shift is the proliferation of Programmable Logic Devices (PLDs), Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGAs), and the growth of system-on-a-chip (SOC) design. SOC designs facilitate innovation by incorporating the speed of dedicated hardware and memory with the flexibility of general purpose processors on a single chip. The use of this reprogrammable high-speed platform helps students reach a stage of true emancipation, combining their coursework knowledge in a more holistic engineering approach. In this article, we discuss the benefits of the reconfigurable highspeed platform in academia. By enhancing information sharing and collaboration between research and education, undergraduate students can gain more exposure to cutting edge research. In addition, the use of this platform for research prototyping serves to enhance the visibility of research projects to the industrial community. We illustrate how this platform can be co-opted into current practices via several case studies and the associated benefits that can be gained.