Course Description

This course focuses on practical applications of advanced digital design concepts. Topics will be related to design with embedded processors and application specific architectures. The course is focused around the specification, design and implementation of a significant project to be implemented on a FPGA. Although, the course projects will be implemented using FPGAs, many of the design concepts will also applicable to ASIC designs.

Lectures will include topics such as design flows, design with HDLs, good design practices, Intellectual Property (IP) reuse, and FPGA CAD and technologies. Some lectures will also be devoted to issues in the lab, and an in-class test. (There will be no final exam)

Labs and projects will be implemented on an FPGA design board. The goal of the project is to provide a real design opportunity using state-of-the-art tools and technology.

The objective of the project is to provide students with some practical experience implementing more complex designs, highlighting approaches for designing large digital systems encompassing many gates and a lot of software. Students will need to leverage knowledge obtained from previous courses, such as:

• At the hardware level, this will call upon knowledge of computer architecture, logic design, and circuit design.

• The software component of these projects will not have the benefit of a common operating system that abstracts the hardware from the students. Students will need to apply their knowledge of operating systems, compilers, algorithms and networking at a low-level where they interact directly with the hardware. This is often applicable to embedded system designs.

• Depending on their choice of design projects, students will have to call upon the algorithms they have learned in areas such as control systems, digital signal processing, multimedia, networking, and data structures as integral parts of the overall architecture of their system. They will have to produce both hardware and software that work in concert to create the overall system.

Effort will be required to learn how to push these modern design automation tools to be a productive part of the overall design process. Anyone can use tools if they work all the time by pushing the right buttons. Understanding what the tools are trying to do means that when things inevitably break, students will know where to look to find the problem, and how to get around it.

The reality of being a good designer is knowing how to debug, whether it is your own design, or the tools. As such, while this course provides a chance for creativity and significant independent learning, it requires a lot of hard work. However, for those who are committed to putting in the time, it is a lot of fun.

At the end of term, we have an open house with demonstrations and guest "celebrity" judges so everyone can see what you have accomplished with all of your hard work. In closing, this course will teach you many practical skills that will be useful in your career and you will (hopefully) have some fun while doing it!