Prototyping System for VLSI Education

数字系统设计课程的一个主要问题是找到合适的 实验室经验 随着设计的门复杂性的增加， 进行原型设计和硬件开发变得越来越困难 试验. 数字系统的本质是这样的， 嵌入在测试或操作环境中的系统将 通常需要使用许多芯片，即使一些全芯片或半芯片， 使用定制芯片。 构建一个电路板并将这些电路板互连 使用任何现有技术在其上安装芯片都是昂贵和耗时的 消耗，以及要求学生不寻常的技术技能。 不良的施工实践产生不可靠的，非维护性的， 性能退化的原型。 本项目提供了一个低成本、高质量、快速的原型 支持新领域（即学生）编程门阵列的环境 （FPGA）芯片包含数千个门。 设计并制作了一个双板装置（总线扩展器和原型） 用于价格低廉、易于使用且无处不在的IBM XT/AT 数字系统实验室里的电脑 原型板提供了 支持快速互联和教育用途所需的“胶水” 一个数字系统有两个FPGA芯片。 一旦学生 设计一个数字系统，并对FPGA芯片进行编程， 在绕线几个小时后，门外系统是可测试的。 的 其结果是大大改善了学生的原型制作过程。 六十 向全国各大学提供董事会， 贷款/评估。

A major problem in digital system design courses is finding suitable laboratory experiences. As the gate complexities of designs increase, it becomes increasingly difficult to perform prototyping and hardware testing. The nature of digital systems is such that prototyping of a system which is embedded in a testing or operational environment will usually entail the use of numerous chips, even if some full- or semi- custom chips are used. Constructing a board and interconnecting these chips on it using any current technology is expensive and time consuming, as well as requiring of students uncommon technician skills. Poor construction practice produces unreliable, non-maintainable, and degraded performance prototypes. This project provides a low-cost,high-quality, fast prototyping environment to support new field (i.e. student) programmed gate array (FPGA) chips containing thousands of gates. A two-board set (bus extender and prototype) was designed and fabricated for use with inexpensive, easily used, and ubiquitous IBM XT/AT computers in a digital systems lab. The prototype board provides the "glue" needed to support the rapid interconnection and educational use of a digital system having up to two FPGA chips. Once a student designs a digital system and the FPGA chips are programmed, a thousands- of-gates system is testable after a few hours of wire-wrapping. The result is a dramatically improved student prototyping process. Sixty boards were made available to universities nationwide for loan/evaluation.