Using FPGA development boards for multi-course laboratory support

The paper presents authors´ work on extending the use of FPGA-based development boards as student lab equipment for several courses in the curricula of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. We are witnessing today a rapid evolution of FPGAs evaluated not only in the number of equivalent logic gates but also in I/O pins, on-chip memory blocks, arithmetic units and processor cores. Taking advantage of these advanced features, we are examining the possibility to use FPGA-based development boards to support laboratory works that were traditionally based on microcontrollers, processors or other dedicated devices. The courses of Real-Time Programming, Digital Signal Processing or Robotics are example of such courses. Initial studies show that this approach results in a reduction of equipment costs and an improvement of student learning curve.