Teaching > Undergraduate Courses
CAD for Digital H/W (E-CAD)
This course intends to juxtapose traditional and modern ways of designing digital systems. Programmable logic devices are introduced and focus is given in Field Programmable Gate Arrays for letting our students get zero-turnaround-time implementations of their designs. After a short introduction of graphical design entry and PCB realization, attention is given on FSM representation, HDL design, behavioral simulation and synthesis targetting FPGA devices.
The course is backed up by 9 lab exercises performed on major vendors' (Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, Xilinx) tools. Then a bigger project is assigned to lab teams each consisting of at most 3 students. The project has a substantial degree of complexity in order not to have a unique obvious solution. We currently utilize XSA-3S1000 Boards with 1-Mgate Spartan-3 FPGA for implementing our designs.
Marks are based on the proven functionality of a design by simulating vectors provided by the instructor, on the area and speed that their implementation can achieve, but also on the presentation of their project.