Enhancing The Digital Systems Courses With Modern Design Tools And Practices

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is report our work to enhance the digital design experience of students throughout the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) curriculum at the Dearborn campus of the University of Michigan. In recent years, industry has adopted the use of digital design tools that can significantly shorten the time required to complete a design and bring a product to market. These software and hardware tools include hardware descriptive languages, such as HDL and VHDL, field programmable gate arrays, and digital simulation packages, such as PowerView. The goal of this project is to integrate some of these design tools in a consistent and pedagogically sound manner throughout the ECE curriculum, thereby exposing students to current industry practice and state-of-the-art design technology.

1 Introduction

The primary goal of this project is to expand the ECE laboratory facilities to provide our undergraduate students with high quality experiments and design projects in the area of Digital Design and Computer Architecture. In particular, our aim is to expose the students to current industrial practices such as digital programmable technologies, Hardware Description Languages (HDL’s), and design automation software. The experiments will enhance the students’ understanding of design entry,

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