Computer systems design competition at BYU

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at BYU has created a new senior project class for computer engineering students. This project class provides a multi-disciplinary team design experience for students interesting in the design of computer-based systems. The structure of this class is organized around the Computer Society International Design Competition (CSIDC) sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. Students participating in this class are required to specify, implement, and test a computer-based system involving both hardware and software components. The most successful student team is selected to represent BYU in the IEEE CSIDC competition. This paper describes the organization of this project class and demonstrates how the CSIDC contest can be used as a model for a senior project design class.