ECAD 2008–09
Principal lecturer: Dr Simon Moore Taken by: Part IB Syllabus
Past exam questions
Prerequisites
The Part Ia Digital Electronics course is
a prerequisite. If you have not undertaken this course then please
read Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of the recommended text (Harris and Harris - see
below) and complete the exercises before starting the ECAD
course.
The material in this course (including the IVC web based tutor
content) is prerequisite for the
ECAD practical classes.
Structure
ECAD is being taught through an Interactive Verilog Compiler web
system and four lectures.
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
SystemVerilog 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. IVC will be used for the first laboratory session and
completed as homework. The material the IVC covers is a prerequisite for the
ECAD practical classes.
Start IVC
Lecture Handouts
The lecture notes are handed out at the first lecture. Further copies should be available from
Student Admin. A
PDF is also available from the cam.ac.uk domain only.
Related workshops
Please see ECAD and Architecture Practical
Classes
Errata
- Slide 3-13: "D latch" should have been a "D flip-flop" (i.e. edge
triggered clocked D flip-flop rather than a D latch with level
sensitive enable) and the multiplexer enable was inverted - see the
corrected slide.
Recommended book
The following text is recommended for this course and also
Digital Electronics (Part Ia) and
Computer Design (Part Ib).
- Harris, D.M. & Harris, S.L. (2007). Digital Design and Computer Architecture. Morgan Kaufmann.
Related external links
Examination information
There is one ECAD question in the Part IB Tripos.
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