Digital Hardware Design

4
ECE270

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are first choice for implementation of digital systems due to their distributed and parallel architecture. FPGAs also allow complete control over arithmetic world-lengths and dynamic partial reconfigurability thereby leading to optimal computational efficiency. Integration of FPGA with ARM processor has led to significant interests in Zynq SoC because of their usefulness in applications such as software defined radios, cellular base stations, datacenters, video processing and computer vision etc.

In this course, students will learn how to implement algorithms in an FPGA using Verilog. Though this course assumes prior knowledge of digital design and Verilog, first couple of weeks will be dedicated to revise these concepts. Labs and assignments will focus on developing working programs that use various features and ports of FPGA boards (ATLYS and Zedboard) including VGA, UART, memory etc. Couple of weeks will be dedicated to Zynq SoC which integrates ARM dual Cortex-A9 based processor system with Xilinx 7-series FPGA. Tutorials on Zynq programming using Vivado will motivate the students to take advanced FPGA courses.

1. Students are able to design and implement sequential and combinational logic design on FPGA.
2. Students are able to use the FPGA resources (slices, memory, embedded hardware units etc.) to meet the area, power and speed requirements.
3. Students are able to write Verilog code to integrate on-board FPGA switches, VGA interfaces, memory, embedded hardware units etc.
4. Students are able to explain the Zynq SoC architecture and its applications.
Monsoon

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