A Course to Train Digital Hardware Designers for Industry

A new methodology to teach digital hardware design with a limited time budget is presented. The emphasis is placed on training hardware engineers to answer the needs of the industry. The proposed course is focused on teaching how to design rather than just teaching a hardware description language or a set of tools. This goal is achieved through lectures, tutorials, and small projects. Projects are the core of the proposed methodology and are structured in a pedagogical format. The students must follow the entire design process in all the projects. They receive a written specification that they must interpret. The deliverables are a functionally verified code that meets some synthesis constraints and a report that documents their design. Histograms of the grades are used as a tool to study the student's progress.