Vertical Integration of System-on-Chip Concepts in the Digital Design Curriculum

The rapid evolution of System-on-Chip (SoC) challenges academic curricula to keep pace with multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary system thinking. This paper presents a curricular prototype that cuts across artificial course boundaries and provides a meaningful exploration of diverse facets of SoC design. Specifically, experimental contents of a digital flow SoC product design-a simplified Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/Internet Protocol (IP) stack-are systematically developed and implemented in the series of courses that comprise the Digital Design track of the Rowan Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) curriculum. The System-on-Chip project and its progressively more complex laboratory modules are described and discussed. Its implementation in the existing ECE curriculum is also presented along with the assessment results.