A teaching strategy for developing application specific architectures for FPGAS

• Autores: J.M.P. Cardoso
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 24, no. Extra 4, 2008, págs. 833-842
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper presents an approach to teaching design of non-programmable application-specific architectures using VHDL, logic and physical synthesis tools and FPGAs. The approach relies on mini-projects that resemble typical problems that students may face in reallife concerning the design of application-specific architectures. The teaching approach presented in this paper supports the incremental learning of both VHDL and the tools used, as the projects are being developed, i.e., students are motivated to acquire skills at the pace at which those skills are required to advance project development. The results so far are very encouraging. Even students with little knowledge of hardware design and embedded systems have succeeded in their assignments. Feedback obtained from students reveals the suitability of certain aspects of the approach and the major difficulties they have faced.