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。随着设计的门的复杂性增加，执行原型和硬件测试变得越来越困难。数字系统的本质是，嵌入在测试或操作环境中的系统的原型通常需要使用许多芯片，即使使用了一些全定制或半定制的芯片。构建一块电路板并使用任何当前技术将这些芯片互连在上面是昂贵和耗时的，而且需要学生非凡的技术技能。糟糕的施工实践会产生不可靠、不可维护和性能降级的原型。该项目提供了一个低成本、高质量、快速的原型环境，以支持包含数千门的新型现场(即学生)可编程门阵列(FPGA)芯片。在一个数字系统实验室中，设计和制造了一种双板设备(总线扩展器和原型)，用于廉价、易用和无处不在的IBM XT/AT计算机。该原型板提供了支持快速互连和教育用途所需的“粘合剂”，该数字系统最多具有两个FPGA芯片。一旦学生设计了一个数字系统，并对FPGA芯片进行了编程，一个数千门的系统在几个小时的布线后就可以测试了。其结果是大大改进了学生的原型制作过程。向全国范围内的大学提供了60个董事会供借阅/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.