Computer Laboratory – Course material 2007

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ECAD

Lecturer: Dr S.W. Moore

No. of lectures and practicals: 4 + 8

Prerequisite course: Digital Electronics

This course is a prerequisite for VLSI Design (Part II).

Aims

This course aims to introduce electronic computer aided design (ECAD) with a particular emphasis on the Verilog hardware description language (HDL). The course covers eight lectures of material but four of the lectures have been replaced by an interactive tutor system to teach Verilog (the Intelligent Verilog Compiler, or IVC). The IVC will be used for the first two laboratory sessions and completed as homework. The material the IVC covers is a prerequisite for the remaining seven practical sessions.

Lectures

Introduction and motivation. Current technology, technology trends, ECAD trends, challenges.
Logic modelling, simulation and synthesis. Logic value and delay modelling. Discrete event and device simulation. Automatic logic minimization.
Chip, board and system testing. Production testing, fault models, testability, fault coverage, scan path testing.
Verilog systems design. Practicalities of mapping Verilog descriptions of hardware (including a MIPS processor) onto an FPGA board. Introduction of Verilog 2001 constructs not covered by IVC. Tips and pitfalls when generating larger modular designs.

On-Line Learning Component: Interactive Verilog Compiler

The interactive Verilog compiler (IVC) teaches the synthesizable subset of Verilog which is required to complete the laboratory sessions.

Objectives

At the end of the course students should

be able to design, prototype and debug circuits using Verilog targeted at programmable gate arrays (FPGA)
understand circuit simulation, synthesis and testing concepts
appreciate hardware/software codesign

Recommended reading

* Harris, D. & Harris, S. (2007). Digital design and computer architecture: from gates to processors. Morgan Kaufmann.

Pointers to sources of more specialist information are included in the lecture notes and on the associated course web page.

Next: Floating-Point Computation Up: Michaelmas Term 2007: Part Previous: Concurrent Systems and Applications Contents