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This course intends to present traditional and modern ways of designing digital hardware. In parallel, programmable logic devices and especially Field Programmable Gate Arrays are introduced to give our students the ability to realize zero-turnaround-time implementations of their designs. After a short introduction of graphical design entry and PCB realization, attention is given on FSM representation, HDL design, behavioral simulation and synthesis targetting FPGA devices.

The course is backed up by 9 lab exercises performed on major vendors' (Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, Xilinx) tools. Then a bigger project is assigned to lab teams each consisting of at most 3 students. The project has a substantial degree of complexity in order not to have a unique obvious solution. Grading is performed for students that can prove the functionality of their design with vectors provided by the instructor but also based on the area and speed that their implementation can achieve.