Significant microelectronics systems design experience for a heterogeneous class of CS, CE, and EE students

Using structured design te chniques b orrowe d from software programming, beginning circuit designers at the University of Cincinnati consistently cr eate correct, working chips c ontaining sever al thousand gates.Car eful choic e of topics and easy-to-use tools allow consider ation of physic al behavior and optimization techniques and also prepare students for more advanc edstudy of circuit design. Chip testing is accomplished with user-friendly softwar eand hardwar ecreated locally by a group of M.S. students. Initially targeting CMOS tiny chip designs, course materials have recently been modi e d for pr ogrammable lo gic devic es (PLD's). Imme diatetestability of PLD's provides better feedback, and the associated design tools supp ort high-level hardwar edescription languages (HDL's). This also makes multi-chip student pr ojects feasible.